Interview between Adonis Violaris of CSN and Richard Beecham – Director, Global Partnerships & Strategic Development, Intellian

Can you provide an overview of Intellian’s role and contribution to the maritime industry, particularly in the realm of connectivity and digital solutions?

Intellian is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, with Eric Sung, our CEO, at the helm since 2004 when he founded the company with other founding members. From the early days of just TVRO systems, we’ve evolved into the business we are today with a portfolio that also includes VSAT, L-band and LEO (parabolic and our new flat panels). Plus, we’ll have our GMDSS solutions that are in development, entering the market early next year. It’s an exciting time for us.

One of our strengths lies in our partnerships with network operators and distribution partners. We have more strategic partnerships with more network operators than any other manufacturer, which puts us at the heart of the ecosystem. We focus on developing products that suit networks and end customers’ needs, which can be easily integrated by our distribution partners into their service offering.

We’re very keen on not just developing products that work, but also the backend infrastructure as well. Distribution, stock, technical support – we’ve invested a lot in our regional offices and regional warehouses. In the maritime market you must be agile, so we work hard to make sure we are for our partners and key service providers. I think that’s what Intellian does extremely well, and one of the key things that we were focused on. Certainly, in terms of what trends we’re looking at, it’s a changing dynamic.

There’s a lot of disruption in the market with the introduction of LEO technology. It’s been extremely fast paced for a connectivity environment that’s generally been quite slow in adopting new technology, such as migrating from L-band to KU-VSAT. But now LEO has just really ramped things up and adoption is fast.

I’m pleased to say that Intellian have had the foresight and investment to put over a hundred million dollars into our flat panel antenna development, which is the new thing on the block. That will address bandwidth requirements and the increasing demand for data and digitalization within the maritime industry.

Can you discuss the importance of digitalisation in the maritime sector and how Intellian solutions are facilitating this transformation?

Where Intellian sit, we are the mediator between that digitalization because we create the hardware. But it’s always on the hardware sometimes that the whole thing starts from there. It’s key for us to have a solution that can transfer that digitalization. We have invested a lot in Aptus NX, which is our software platform that our partners can connect into. You can monitor everything from the antenna performance to an array of different metrics, which can be transferred and the customer can see how the system is performing, or in the event where something goes wrong. Remote diagnostics is a key thing when you’re out at sea or in a port.

A lot of our support cases, about 70-75%, are all fixed on remote diagnostics. So, we can proactively see and monitor which is all part of digitalization and greater efficiency. From what our product does, it provides the bandwidth and power for a customer to be fully digitalized.

My next question was about cybersecurity. I was always the opinion that this must go at the root of the problem. And in this case, at the network, but also on the devices that are passing through the data which can block such threads at the root before they come to the ship, either it’s the network or it’s the device that is transmitting the connectivity.

From a cybersecurity perspective, you’re right about the network operators. Also, a lot of it relies on the modem, which is obviously outside of Intellian’s development.

Our partners as well, where they introduce their network management device, Intellian doesn’t create. That is where a key cybersecurity part is and that’s where you’ll get the DNV certification.

From our perspective, we are discussing DNV amongst others on some of our products, but our side, we don’t control the connectivity per se. It’s difficult for us to manage what goes over the network without just an on-off switch.

We’re very proactive in making sure that from a cybersecurity threat, we’re monitoring it and making sure that our products and digital services underneath that are secure.

What role do you see satellite technology playing in the future of maritime connectivity and how is the Intellian position in certain areas?

The commercial maritime market, which is our core market and a lot of the satcoms industry’s core market, is we’re in a disruptive phase with new LEO technology coming in. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve launched our flat panels, which will be on the Eutelsat OneWeb LEO network, but we’ll also be developing further flat panels since it is Intellian’s IP.

There are more players joining the market as the barrier to entry is lowered to become a network operator.

Also, with the existing GEO VSATs culminating together with recent consolidations in the market, I see they will be making more improved propositions as GEOs get more powerful. There’s a place in the market for GEO VSAT. And we are there to innovate with them, whether that’s simultaneous with Ku/Ka-band, which is systems that we provide or whether it’s through a single feed like we have at the moment with our NX Series.

We cover the breadth of it. So, where we see it today and maybe tomorrow as well, is that for full reliable connectivity, there must be a hybrid solution. Whether that’s with LEO, whether that’s with GEO VSAT, whether that’s with L-Band, with the GMDSS on top, and then other services like LTE, that’s where we see it.

It’s very important for the end customer to have a full suite of products where they know they’re getting ultra reliable connectivity and good speeds. And this is certainly what a lot of the network operators and partners are starting to develop now with their hybrid SD-WAN solutions. Where we see ourselves in that is being the hardware manufacturer, one-stop shop across the board in developing hardware.

Now, the next question is how do we get that all into one piece of kit? Which is certainly a long-term goal and there’s obviously physics and engineering challenges behind that. But Intellian are quite exclusive with regards to developing flat panel terminals as well as parabolic terminals. I don’t think there’s any other provider in the maritime space that actually do both.

We’re in quite a unique position to understand the pros and cons of each technology and how they will work with different networks. This is where we see ourselves and see the future for the next few years at least.

To elaborate a little bit on the GMDSS, can you share any recent innovations or developments particularly exciting or impactful in maritime industry? You mentioned the flat panels and the GMDSS.

With the IMO regulations changing towards the end of the year, Iridium have been working on their GMDSS offering for a few years, but it’s coming to fruition now.

We have an array of Iridium Certus service terminals, the C200M and the C700. We decided to make the move and invest quite a lot into radio technology. For the past couple of years, we’ve been developing different GMDSS safety display systems and radio systems, VHF/MF/HF, NAVTEX that sort of thing, which will be launched early in 2025.

We see the bridge equipment as obviously a key part of the overall solution and certainly a key part for connectivity. As we have experience, distribution and a huge partner network, we think we can tap into that to create an overall, again, one-stop shop with the new developments going on in GMDSS.

So that investment is key for us and with the regulations that are coming, I think it’s important that there is a mixed market and competition there.

We’ve developed two flat panels for Maritime, for Eutelsat OneWeb LEO services. A half-duplex Compact, which is the OW10HM and a full duplex Enterprise, and that’s got two flat panels in it, one doing up, one doing down, which will be out in Q4. In terms of flat panel development, we’ve been doing that in the US for five years now and we’re ready. We’ll be launching new technologies and variants of flat panels it is designed for SWAP-C – it’s modular. As user demands change within the market, we can adapt to that. It’s very much what the use cases and what the users demand from their network, and we will be able to build that quickly and cost effectively.

What are the future plans and vision for Intellian and the condition of the evolving maritime industry?

I’ve personally invested a lot of time here over the years, having been based out in Greece supporting strategic partners, but certainly we see Cyprus and Greece as a key market for us. We’ve had great success working with our key partners and key customers to be part of their solution. That will continue as we start to develop a mixed array of products across different orbits and different solutions to suit the needs of the end user.

Certainly, from our perspective this is what are we’re always looking to improve. That is why we are constantly innovating. We invest a substantial amount of our revenue back into R&D.

It’s one thing that we’ve always had the eye on future technology and different areas of diversification to make sure that we have solutions for everyone in connectivity. That’s what we’ll be focused on.

The key strength for Intellian is our distribution network and support globally, that will continue to improve in region as well.

Developing better ways to service, certification, easier to install, all key factors which makes life easier for the end customer.