The final frontier in communications
Satellite communications are no longer simply the last resort in an offshore emergency. In our hyper-connected existence, they are increasingly a comfort that we can’t do without when sailing far from land. From the thoroughly modern-day luxuries of posting to social media or sending a video clip, to confidence-inducing measures such as downloading the latest weather data wherever you are, sat comms are ubiquitous for bluewater cruisers and racers alike.
The technology required varies according to what you want to do with it, as does the cost of staying connected. It’s all a question of bandwidth. The good news is that prices are falling on the back of major investment by key players like Iridium and Inmarsat, and thanks to competition from terrestrial satcomms providers, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and the UK’s OneWeb. Airtime is getting cheaper, and so is the hardware that uses it.
Iridium’s NEXT generation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites is a case in point. Comprising 75 new satellites, the constellation was completed in 2019 after eight launches. Dan Rooney at Iridium described it as the biggest tech refresh in history: “We migrated all of our previous users onto the new satellites with no downtime.”
The new satellites have enabled Iridium to roll out the Certus data service, using lighter, cheaper ‘user terminals’, as the antenna and black box receiver is called. Certus 100 is the entry-level service, and the most appealing for sailing users with a download
