Adventure Charter Boat Communications

A 34m luxury adventure charter boat operates luxury diving and sightseeing tours along the Kimberly Coast of Australia and in Southern Papua New Guinea. Crew use the boat's Fleet 77 satcom system for all crew and guest communications.

The service is billed per minute of usage. Even with careful management, monthly bills regularly exceed US$ 5,000. Typically 20% of this is essential crew communications, to manage bookings, arrange guest transfers, weather reports, victualing etc.

The purser attempts to recover the remainder by calculating guest bills manually. With expectations rising over the years, she finds that more and more guests complain that the internet service is slow and expensive.

The Solution

A break-even cost calculation shows that a Sea Tel 4009 VSAT and broadband airtime account pays for itself within 2 years at current usage rates. What's more, the internet service is up to 20 times faster, always connected and the boat receives 2 Sydney phone numbers making calls to the boat from shore very cheap for guests and suppliers. Calls between the boat and the office in Sydney are free of charge

Guests can purchase or be issued vouchers to use the wireless internet on board. Workload of the purser has been decreased and income from the vouchers almost completely offsets the US$ 3200 per month fixed, recurring cost for the service so that the cost of crew communications is now negligible.