Atlantic Bulk is a Greek ship operator of 20+ Ultramax and Supramax size bulk carriers that trade worldwide. The company has recently begun trials of Starlink on 2 of its fleet and in this interview, IT Manager Michael Sakellis describes how the service has been performing so far.

‘As a progressive, forward-thinking company, we were very keen to give the new Starlink service a try,’ he begins. ‘We have initially installed it on 2 of our vessels, one of which was operating in the Mediterranean on a crossing from Greece to Gibraltar, while the other was in the Central America region.

So far we have been very happy with the results on both ships – we have seen speeds at sea of between 20 to 35 Mbps download, and 5 to 25 Mbps upload as well as very low latencies, which means that there has been a significant improvement in terms of speed. Everything is much faster now, from file synchronization to updates and in all areas, using applications has become much more efficient.

Crew welfare is one of the most important areas for Atlantic Bulk, and I am pleased to say that the crew are also very happy with the speed of the Starlink service, they are simply able to do much more in terms of their communications with loved ones, like video calling, and generally in the way they use their personal data allowance.

What’s more, we found that the Starlink installation process was quite straightforward – Navarino provided us with an installation guide which was helpful, and in fact on the vessel in Central America, the Captain and crew were able to install the antenna themselves.

Overall I would say that we are very pleased with this new high-speed connectivity option and I think it will be seen on most merchant ships in the future, alongside existing legacy satellite services.’

Konstantinos Dimitriadis, Navarino’s Account Manager for Atlantic Bulk added ‘I am very happy to hear this feedback from Mr Sakelis and to see how Starlink is helping optimize and enhance the business operations and crew welfare onboard their vessels. Starlink’s satellite internet service is quickly gaining popularity in the maritime sector due to its high-speed, reliable connectivity and global coverage. It’s exciting to see customers adopting this innovative technology and I am proud to be assisting Atlantic Bulk in rolling out Starlink to their fleet.’