Broadband/Connectivity/Telcos Maritime News

NSSLGlobal and Teekay sign extended four-year maritime satcom contract

The new contract will provide an upgraded bandwidth capability across the Teekay fleet alongside the installation of NSSLGlobal’s Cruise Control+ appliance and the rollout of its crew entertainment service.

Satcom provider NSSLGlobal has announced a four-year, multi-million dollar enhanced contract for communication and entertainment services with Teekay, one of the world’s largest marine energy transportation, storage and production companies.

The new contract will provide an upgraded bandwidth capability across the Teekay fleet alongside the installation of NSSLGlobal’s new virtualised Cruise Control+ appliance and the rollout of CrewVision, its crew entertainment service. The new contract cements the longstanding relationship between NSSLGlobal and Teekay dating back to 2004. NSSLGlobal has worked closely with Teekay to align its developments to Teekay’s everyday needs and longer-term strategic objectives.

The Cruise Control+ upgrade provides Teekay a complete end-to-end solution for the seamless integration of communications, entertainment and IT services on board its vessels. New security features include an embedded VPN, an integrated Unified Threat Management (UTM) with enhanced Layer 7 firewall, gateway anti-virus, deep packet inspection, intrusion detection and prevention capabilities. A SIEM and Log Management capability ensures network security logs are centrally notified, monitored and reported.

The Cruise Control+ now also comes with CrewVision, a crew entertainment service that provides live news, and the latest films, sports and TV programmes — all optimised to work efficiently over a satellite connection without affecting the vessel’s bandwidth.

Teekay wanted a holistic view of its core operational and performance data on one platform. Working in collaboration with Teekay, NSSLGlobal developed INSIGHT to empower Teekay’s central management to track its VSAT IP@SEA service 24/7 across the fleet and per vessel. INSIGHT allows Teekay to instantly filter its business-critical data to manage one of the largest fleets in the world. The constantly evolving platform is responsive and, at a click, the custom-built central dashboard provides graphical real-time visibility of each vessel, including VSAT status, UTM Layer 7 traffic, data usage and billing.

“We’ve been working hard on a smooth transition of our recent acquisitions into the NSSLGlobal family, and our people in Singapore, UK, Norway and Germany have produced a winning formula of how we work seamlessly as a team to support our global customers,” said Sally-Anne Ray, CEO, NSSLGlobal.

“Digitalisation and cybersecurity is now an everyday reality for Teekay and we’re extremely proud that NSSLGlobal will continue to play a key role in Teekay’s ability to manage all vessel comms, safety, security and crew welfare benefits for the next four years. Maintaining such a strong 15-year relationship can never be taken for granted. It is built firmly on an absolute commitment to customer service and an agile approach to innovation that ensures we’re laser-focused on engineering the value-added services and breakthrough technologies like our Satlink modem, our Cruise Control+ and our INSIGHT Portal that set us apart from the competition.”

Deborah Sloan, Contract/Category Specialist, Strategic Development, Teekay, added: “As a communications partner to Teekay for 15 years, NSSLGlobal has developed a hugely valuable understanding of our business and have proven their ability to deliver a robust and flexible service that continues to exceed expectations and to plan for future requirements. The cybersecurity assurance and IT managed services provided by the Cruise Control+ upgrade will help us to eliminate some of the challenges created by digitalisation and give us more freedom to focus on each vessel’s operational and crew welfare priorities.”

Teekay’s core deliverables already include NSSLGlobal’s full VSAT IP@SEA service, which combines an extensive Ku- and C- Band coverage with some of the fastest speeds in the industry and service assurance via L-Band for complete service availability. Because NSSLGlobal fully owns and controls its own network and with SatLink (it’s hubs and modems state of the art technology) it can offer more flexible and bespoke solutions.