Wired Ocean

Technology Guide

Integrates mobile and broadcast satellite technology

Wired Ocean uses a ‘hybrid’ technology that integrates L-band (mobile) satellites and Ku-band television broadcast (fixed) satellites to deliver marine internet.

Typical internet use follows a particular pattern: Small amounts of data (such as webpage or search requests) are sent, but much larger amounts of data (for example web pages and internet content) are received. While mobile satellite services are capable of transmitting the small amounts of sent data, they are not well suited to transmit the much larger amounts of received data, because they have limited capacity (bandwidth). Wired Ocean makes use of the low ratio of sent/received information in order to offer high speed internet with low equipment and usage costs. This is because it uses high capacity satellites to deliver data to ships (similar to that used in VSAT systems), but makes use of low capacity satellites to send data from the ship.

On board and on shore components

Elements of the Wired Ocean system include the:

• S-Box (Satellite Broadband Server) which is installed on a vessel and manages the Wired Ocean service
• Network operations hub which hosts and manages the service onshore
• Satellite capacity, on high bandwidth TV satellites
• Performance enhancement systems

More information

For a more detailed description of the Wired Ocean technology, view PDF