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Monthly Insights and Innovations from the leading SuperYacht technology advisers and designers.
So welcome to episode seven of the Smartcast. Here with me, I've got Tom and Germit to chat about flat panel technology.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Smartcast. Monthly insights and innovations from the leading independent superyacht technology advisers and designers.
Speaker 1:How are you doing guys?
Speaker 3:Very well, thank you. Hope you guys are all doing well.
Speaker 4:Great, thanks Howard.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Very hot this afternoon here in The UK. It's touching like
Speaker 4:It's very warm.
Speaker 1:27 degrees, isn't it? It is, Yeah. Which is a bit of a treat for us. So we'll get straight into it then. Okay.
Speaker 1:So going from the start, what is a flat panel antenna or a flat panel?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, I I can answer that one. I mean, I'll I'll start with other types of antenna, because that's what most people think of when we talk about antennas we think about like the the sticks on the mast or something that's within a radome like a VSAT or a TVRO that will be very common terms to people in yachting they're all antennas they're just different types of antenna, and a flat panel antenna again is still an antenna but it's just a different type so as the name states it's quite flat, but technically what it is it's a phased array electronically steerable antenna. It's solid state which means it has no moving parts, but it can electronically steer its beam so you can track satellites and that's what they use for satellite communication it can track satellites across the sky without itself physically moving.
Speaker 1:So it can take in all kinds of signals can it?
Speaker 4:Yeah well what they're mainly as a replacement for is satellite internet so they're really a replacement or an adjunct for VSATs which is very small aperture terminal in technical terms. They were or still are parabolic dishes so they're like a satellite dish as people may think of them and they actually physically move and track a stationary satellite around, but when they're on a boat they have to move because obviously the boat moves. The electronically steerable ones they don't physically move so they they track, they can track a stationary satellite, but because they're very far away in the order of sort of 38,000 miles away, they need a lot of power to be able to transmit up to those satellites so what they actually excel in is low earth orbit satellite communication because they're a lot closer so they don't need as much power to transmit up to the satellite. Right. I mean the common one that most people will know is Starlink.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So with low earth orbit it basically means that the satellites are moving, across across the earth. They're not they're not in sync with the rotation of the earth so they come into view and go out of view depending on how high they are it can be you know thirty seconds or it can be a couple of minutes and the flat panel antennas because they're electronically steerable they can actually track one or more of these antennas as they move and also when the boat's moving as well they counteract that so they're actually quite good for this low earth orbit communication.
Speaker 1:Gammit, you showed me a really interesting, website, didn't you, that that showed how many, satellites were in existence supporting each technology at any one moment, and there was there's literally thousands in there.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's incredible when you look at the maps, well, a three d view of the earth and you look at the satellites in orbit around it. And it's fascinating to see in this, you know, relatively short amount of time, especially Starlink as a prime example who have been doing it for a bit longer, just how many satellites they actually have in orbit. When you look at the maps, it's incredible to see just how much is up there. And Starlink is just one company.
Speaker 3:You know, you have the likes of OneWeb and, you know, various other suppliers who are also constantly launching satellites up there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So when one says this dial link panel, for example, when that's taking a signal in, is it literally tracking from one satellite to another within an hour and then the next to the next? Because as as the earth is rotating, it's just clicking over from one to the next to the next. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Is that what it does? When you look at the maps, you'll see, especially again with Starlink, they have so many satellites up there. Once the satellite passes over you, typically there'll be another one at least close by, relatively speaking, obviously
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:That it can latch onto and connect to, which is quite different to, as Tom was mentioned before, the more traditional VSATs, which use geostationary orbit satellites.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what is the flat panel actually replacing then technology wise in layman's terms, Gammit?
Speaker 3:So it's being used in a few different ways. One of the ways is replacing traditional VSAT systems as Tom touched on earlier. So these are the big sort of Ray Dome that you see on the mast and which is another internet source. Yeah. So one of the big differences between the flat panel and the VSAT is actually the speed that you get and the latency, which is essentially the time it takes for a packet to return.
Speaker 3:By the very nature of the low earth orbit satellites being much closer to the vessel or to the panel in general, it has less distance to travel to get to the to the satellite. For the geostationary satellites, again, it has much further distance to travel. So latency, the time it takes for the signal to actually reach the satellite is longer. That's it can't be any other way because there is a a set distance and it travels at a certain speed, the signal. So one of the ways is replacing VSATs, although some people do also like having it to supplement VSATs just as another internet source.
Speaker 3:Yeah. What we're also finding is some clients are liking the sort of no Ray Dome look and also using it to not replace TVRO because it's not exactly the same thing, but clients are finding that they're streaming a lot of their media these days, for example, Netflix, Prime, Disney. So a lot of them are saying, well, actually, why do I need a TV RO? I don't use traditional satellite TV decoders, I stream most of my content. So we're now kind of entering a phase where a lot of clients are just getting Ray Domes completely and using flat panels for internet sources.
Speaker 3:And as their primary media streaming because they're normally using Netflix and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Does VSAT have some qualities that flat panel don't have yet as far as like reliability or other qualities? Yes.
Speaker 4:They each have their own benefits and their own drawbacks. With a geostationary, satellite system, you actually only need three satellites to cover the globe totally. With low earth orbit because they're a lot closer, the beam that they or the area that they can cover, let's call it the footprint, is much smaller. So before a service can even become active you need several 100 satellites, which we've seen with with certain companies try, need they need a lot of capital expenditure to get off the ground before they even get a penny in return. So the actual stability of the companies can be one problem compared to sort of traditional geostationary satellite providers.
Speaker 4:In terms of marine specifically the flat panels are very new compared to traditional stabilized parabolic dish antennas, radomes as most people would call them. What they do normally is they operate in a pair, you'd have a pair on the mast because you have a mast which causes blockage, and they operate and switch over automatically so you never really lose the signal unless you go really far north or really far south because all geostationary satellites operate over the Equator so if you're at the Equator your satellite dish will be pointing directly upwards the further north and south you go the more towards the horizon it points and technically it's got a bit further to go as well so that can become a problem. With the flat panels they track antennas, sorry they track satellites because the satellites are always moving so they need a much more clear view of the sky than the traditional VSATs do and that we find that can be a bit of a problem especially retrofitting them on masts because they can't deal with blockages in the same way that a traditional VSAT setup can. So if you have blockages the flat panel itself doesn't necessarily know about them, mean Starlink is a little bit more intelligent than some of them.
Speaker 4:What they do is they they expect a satellite to be in a certain position and by the very nature of the panel it knows it can track it for so many seconds, and if something gets in the way of that tracking it'll just lose the connection, and that's when you get dropouts in in the internet so the way to overcome
Speaker 1:Are you talking about weather conditions?
Speaker 4:Not necessarily weather conditions as in physical obstructions so like the exhaust stack on a mast, the satellites are going essentially horizon to horizon, the flat panel picks it up at a certain point. Mean a lot of these have a field of view of about 100 to 140 degrees or something like that so it can track antennas, I keep saying antennas, track satellites within about a 100 degree field of view so it will start let's depending on the orientation it might start in the north and go to the south and then it'll pick up the next satellite but if there's something obstructing that and it's not expecting it then it'll just drop the connection you can often overcome this with having multiple one multiple flat panels and then in different areas
Speaker 1:on the
Speaker 4:Exactly and then utilizing a bonding service like a layer three bonding service to basically average out if you like on simple terms average everything out so if one goes into blockage it doesn't really matter but the best thing really to do is to make sure that they have a clear field of view you're much better off having one panel that has perfect field of view than having two that have slightly compromised fields of view.
Speaker 1:Right. Okay. Can you can you do drop backup dropouts with VSAT from flat panel so that if it drops out, it cuts across? Or is it is it not that seamless?
Speaker 4:Not that simple. So the way the way bonding works is it combines multiple links together and sends them to like a data center or something on land where it then breaks out onto the internet. What you have to have for bonding to work successfully is similar latencies just by the very nature of the way it works you know if the packets are traveling at different the packets aren't traveling at different speeds but if if they have to go further you can say that they're traveling at different speeds it doesn't it doesn't work so they all have to have similar latencies. The good thing about using low earth orbit or flat panel we're mixing the terms but essentially if you're using a flat panel you're using the low earth orbit generally. You can mix it with four gs and five gs because they have similar latencies so that's a really good backup for things like that.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:You wouldn't be able to bring VSAT, the geostationary satellite VSAT into that link just because the latency difference, yes you could have it as a backup source but it would be more of a manual switch over it wouldn't be seamless by any means.
Speaker 1:Right so at the minute the backup technology that runs alongside it is four and five g.
Speaker 4:Yep. Pretty much. Yeah. That that works quite well even, you know, when you're 20 kilometers away from land with the with the modern antennas. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So it it shouldn't be forgotten.
Speaker 1:So, Germit, what sort of options are available on these systems then currently?
Speaker 3:So the obvious one is Starlink. Yeah. Everyone in the industry has heard of Starlink. Years ago, every owner was asking for Starlink to be put on the boat, you know, whether it was mid build and there'd be something in the news. Starlink was was the obvious one to go for.
Speaker 1:So was Starlink the first flat panel technology that ever appeared on the market then?
Speaker 4:I suppose that's a bit debatable. Depends what you mean by market. In terms of like business to consumer I'd say yes it wasn't available for marine use until fairly recently We've been working on a project that's been that's just been released actually that's been in build for six years and from day one of design we were going to place flat panels on this vessel and those flat panels were were Chimeta. We didn't have a service provider until fairly recently and that is now OneWeb so that vessel operates with a mixture of Starlink and OneWeb via Chimeta flat panels so for maritime use in terms of hardware I'd say no it wasn't Starlink, it was Chimeta. In terms of like a full service offering, it's debatable.
Speaker 4:As I say in terms of domestic on land use, outside of specialist military and you know very, very specialist commercial operations. But but now we're at a stage where, you know, we have we have quite a few options. We have we have Chimeta, Intelion, who are well known antenna manufacturers are making flat panels. And then you've of course, you've got Starlink as well.
Speaker 1:So for people that have that are venturing into sort of first use maybe on a new boat for this technology, what what should the, owners be aware of then when using flat panels? What's the main?
Speaker 3:So I think one of the points to consider is the ongoing costs. So for every panel you have, if you have it, that's essentially another monthly subscription that you're paying for bandwidth. Right. So
Speaker 1:What what sort of like estimate cost? I mean, how much does Starlink cost, for example? Does it depend how many screens you're running or what speed or
Speaker 4:It's it's based it's based on how much bandwidth you want
Speaker 3:and how much data you
Speaker 4:use and how much data you use I mean at the moment I think we're running at about roughly $2,000 for two terabytes about a thousand dollars per terabyte which if you compare that to like a household internet that's eye watering but if you compare that to a traditional VSAT I mean they aren't capped in terms of total data allowance but they're a lot slower so you'd probably never actually physically be able to use two terabytes in a month. So it's just it's something to consider and I mean about streaming as well, Gammi.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, owners are sort of going taking the plunge into getting rid of TV ROs and replacing it with flat panels, Because a lot of them do like to use Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney, so on and so forth for their everyday media consumption.
Speaker 1:So aside of the first big one cost then, what would be the second and third thing to be considering?
Speaker 4:I think it's positioning on the mast for sure I mean that's that's something that an owner might not directly be involved with but you know their their technical teams if it's a new build need to reserve positions on the mast quite early and work with the shipyard and the design team and you know help them understand the limitations of flat panels like they really do need a clear field of view.
Speaker 1:So I'd say you guys have both, well have been engaged in those discussions quite
Speaker 4:a lot. We've been engaged for years I mean as I mentioned earlier six years ago was the first project that we put flat panels on and it was quite unheard of at that time, I mean that's just been released it's quite a pioneering yacht that one but yeah positioning is really key.
Speaker 1:Can we say which yacht it is or?
Speaker 4:Motor yacht breakthrough. So you might hear more about that in the future but yeah that operates with a number of Chimeta flat panels on the one web service, we also have Starlink as well, have four gs, five gs, we do have traditional VSAT on there but it's not used, it's there in case there's outages with any of the LEO services but it's really not being used and we are operating on the LEO services at the moment quite successfully.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. I
Speaker 3:think another thing just to add on to what Tom was saying in terms of positioning and mounting is also cabling actually. It's just being sure that you pull enough cables and not the right type that if the technology does change in the future, of course, it's difficult to predict exactly what the next big thing is. Yeah. But providing a use standardized cabling and enough of it, and you allow for any potential future changes and not locking yourself into one provider like Starlink. It's also very, very important to factor that in mind when you're in the early stages of the build.
Speaker 4:I think that was a good point, Gurmek, because that's one of the things we do.
Speaker 1:Future proofing.
Speaker 4:Future proofing, we're finding that as a service provider releases something they often have their own type of panel or they have a standardized one with a customized modem so you have to change the entire panel it's not like VSAT where any VSAT would work with any service provider you have to basically customize it to the offering and having that cabling and even the space reservation that's not necessarily bespoke to that panel if you leave a generic space reservation for all the different types of panel that are on the market at the moment it means you can switch it out at quite short notice. I mean we see with Starlink they've just released their third generation, high performance panel or as they now just they've just renamed everything so it's now just called performance gen three, the current one that most vessels or yachts will have is what's called the flat high performance that's now the performance generation two, it's slightly different dimensions, the cabling connector is different, thank thankfully they are going to bring out a field termination kit, in a couple of months to allow you to use existing cable, that's already up there for Starlink but you know having penetrations that can be opened and new cable pulled if there is some new magical type of cable I mean honestly most of it is is sort of category cable cat cat five cat six cat seven and that's even what the Starlink is just with a different connector So you're pretty safe with that type of cable in normally.
Speaker 1:Just to wrap up then, what does the future look like for flat panel technology?
Speaker 3:You think? I mean, we're always keeping on top of news and what what what our company is doing in this field. And it's really exciting to see the work that's going on with Project Kuiper, which is the Amazon owned company. Also, IRIS, which is a European based satellite company or consortium, which also looks very exciting. Again, these ones are probably a bit further away from being usable on a yacht, but we're we're keeping on top of these and monitoring them to see how many satellites are they launching into space, what providers are they partnering with, and what what hardware will make its way onto the yachts.
Speaker 3:So we're we're always keeping an eye on what the next big satellite providers will be.
Speaker 1:Are they all offering different features and qualities or are they all offering very similar things?
Speaker 4:Slightly different. I mean, the two that are operational at the moment, have OneWeb and we have Starlink, so Starlink's the well known one so they have a lot of satellites they're actually quite close to the earth, by quite close I haven't got figures to hand so I'm gonna be making this up a little bit but they're about 500 kilometers away from the earth something like that, which means that they're very low latency so in the order of thirty to forty milliseconds which is really good that's the same as four gs five gs but because they're close they need a lot of satellites orbiting. Then you have OneWeb, they have less satellites but they don't need as many because they operate a little further away so about 1,500 kilometers so they have a larger footprint or a larger beam and what they actually have is priority spectrum over Starlink so if Starlink and OneWeb are operating in exactly the same footprint it's a bit more complicated than this but OneWeb actually has the priority spectrum so they can transmit more what that means is they can actually can actually under contract give you guaranteed data rates and these data rates can be quite high they can be hundreds of megabits per second guaranteed globally whereas Starlink can't give that guarantee it's an MIR only service for those who know the the lingo whereas OneWeb can give a CIR and an MIR service.
Speaker 4:Starlink is really good but it doesn't have regulatory authority in every single country so we're still not at a point where it's got full global coverage. I'm sure they'll get there eventually. OneWeb is pretty close to full global coverage at the moment. They're a little bit more expensive, it really depends
Speaker 3:on It's where a slightly it's different service as well I think because yes, they are slightly more expensive. But one of the issues with Starlink is you don't get guaranteed service. If you are in Monaco and there are 20 yachts around you all operating on Starlink, it can become quite congested because you're all using the same network essentially. With the likes of OneWeb, you get a bit more guarantee and a bit more of a personal service. So there is that is also one of the big differences between the likes of Starlink and OneWeb.
Speaker 1:So these future companies like Kuiper and Iris, are they are they working on some of the shortcomings on on the ones that you've just mentioned? Or
Speaker 3:So I think with Kuiper, it's Amazon wants a piece of everything. So for them, I I think it's just getting into the market. Iris is quite a special one and that's very much based in Europe. So looking at what they are doing, it looks very much focused on bringing not power back into Europe, but allowing Europe to to focus on their own systems and and rely on their own systems.
Speaker 4:I think it's gonna be mainly military, isn't it? But they've also said that they're gonna do some commercial offerings, but but ultimately, we don't know because Yeah. That's for them to decide. It it there's no technical limitation necessarily. It's just how they how they structure their packages, if you like.
Speaker 1:Do you think with every new company that starts up and brings another offering, it's gonna eventually bring the end user overall cost down as the market saturates more? Because it obviously
Speaker 4:I think so. I think that's the only way they're gonna be able to come they're gonna be competing for your data. We we are at a stage where, you know there is going to be multiple satellite providers, I don't think there's any doubt about that, it's just how they monetize that and you know as I mentioned before the initial capex to get a functional orbit for low earth orbit is huge because you don't get any return until you've got several 100 satellites operating. You don't get a penny back in revenue so it needs a lot of capital investment to get them off the ground, well, literally.
Speaker 3:I think in the years to come, the competition will overall do the industry good. Although as an avid reader of space news and being a bit of a space nerd myself, it does block the night sky. So, you know, there there is that that I keep in my mind. But, you know, in terms of future rocket launches, so on and so forth, but that's just a a personal thing.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks a lot for coming down to the studio today, guys. That's been fascinating. And we've got a few more tech series podcasts planned that are gonna be coming out shortly. So thanks for tuning in, everyone. And we'll be back back at you soon in the next few weeks.
Speaker 1:Take care.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 4:Thanks.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to Smartcast. Get the winning tech team on your next super yacht project. Contact us today. Email contact us at smart advisers dot com.
Speaker 3:Smart Technology Advisors. Listen. Design.
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