Established in 2001 in Athens, Equinox Maritime today operates a fleet of 23 bulk carriers of various sizes. In this article, the company’s IT Manager, Thodoris Efstathiou discusses the rollout of Starlink’s LEO service across his fleet.

‘We have worked with Navarino for several years and we use their Fleet Xpress services on some of our vessels, in combination with Infinity. About half a year ago we decided to upgrade the connectivity options across the fleet with Starlink, and for that we are using Navarino exclusively.

I can definitely say that Starlink has been a real game changer for both our business and crew communications. We are currently using the 50 GB plan and are considering moving up to the 250 GB plan in future.

Thanks to its very high speed and low latency, Starlink has enabled many new ways of working with our vessels. For example, we are now able to support and deploy software completely remotely, and when needed we have high quality video calls with our seafarers, as if they were on a terrestrial network. Also, being able to use Cloud services and Office 365 is very convenient and has been a big upgrade compared to when we had only VSAT services.

Our crews and their welfare is an absolute priority for Equinox Maritime, and I am delighted to say that Starlink has really helped to exponentially improve their connection with their loved ones. We provide them with a set amount of data for free each month, and the feedback we have received from our vessels about using Starlink has been very positive.

Besides the big change in speed and latency versus VSAT, Starlink also provides coverage in areas where our ships could previously experience some coverage gaps – for example in the very South Atlantic and South Pacific. However, as there are also currently areas where Starlink use is not allowed, I feel it is important for ship operators to keep other networks such as VSAT or L Band in combination with Starlink in order to maintain connectivity with vessels at all times.’

Kyriakos Striboulis, Navarino’s Account Manager for Equinox Maritime added ‘I am very proud that Thodoris and his team have chosen to work with Navarino on this deployment and I am very happy that the Starlink service has been performing so well for them. Modern ship operators can enjoy huge benefits from this new LEO constellation and to hear from Thodoris about those benefits being practically applied so successfully is very welcome. Navarino strives to offer all our customers a five-star experience and I feel that Starlink helps us achieve that.’