The insatiable demand for broadband that is transforming everyday life on land is a factor in the maritime world as well. In a precedent-setting move for the maritime satellite communications market, KVH is launching new Unrestricted Rate Plans featuring Business Class Service for its mini-VSAT Broadband network. KVH’s maritime VSAT solution, which includes innovative TracPhone communications systems, provides satellite Internet and voice services to commercial vessels, private yachts, and military vessels around the world.
Designed to meet the booming demand for maritime connectivity, KVH’s new Business Class Service provides unrestricted, prioritized, multimegabit service with unfettered access to all Internet applications and protocols, including streaming media formats, popular Voice over IP (VoIP) services like Skype™, and rich media web sites. This premium quality service, traditionally only available with very expensive dedicated satellite capacity and used exclusively by high-end cruise ship or megayacht customers, is competitively priced with other shared maritime VSAT services, but delivers significantly faster service and a superior user experience.
“The launch of our new Business Class Service culminates a two-year initiative to upgrade our network, increase our capacity, integrate network management capabilities into our core product offering, and devise unrestricted rate plans that provide unprecedented performance while also being cost effective,” said Brent Bruun, Executive Vice President of KVH’s Mobile Broadband Group. “We’re working hard to keep up with the exponential growth of the Internet and mobile data services. In the past five years there has been an 18-fold increase in the use of mobile data, while more than half of all Internet traffic is now video. There are more than 700,000 apps for iPad®, iPhone®, and Android devices, millions of which are sold every year. Connectivity services that don’t embrace these new technologies will not be able to keep up with the new cloud-based services and other exciting innovations we are sure to see in coming years.”
Rather than block popular high-bandwidth services or limit access through deliberately reduced speeds, KVH’s new transparent, usage-based rate plans provide a defined amount of data in a monthly package and give the customer the opportunity to buy more service at a reasonable price if the package threshold is exceeded during the month. Heavy users are free to consume as much bandwidth as they desire because they are paying for the additional service. Further, with these new plans, KVH dynamically monitors usage and can quickly add satellite capacity as required to stay ahead of customer demands. With bundles from 5 GB to 40 GB and additional gigabytes for as little as $200 ($0.20 per megabyte), these new plans are faster than comparably priced fixed rate plans and offer speeds as high as 4 Mbps. With mini-VSAT Broadband’s Unrestricted Rate Plans, customers are not prevented from enjoying all of the modern web content that is transforming the Internet into a multimedia experience accessed by a plethora of new devices.
Full details about the new Business Class Service are available at KVH’s online Press Room.
