From Marine Electronics & Communications
Record-breaker Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) Cruises’ new flagship MSC Meraviglia is named as Marine Electronics & Communications’ Ship of the Year. It was the clear winner because of its achievement of breaking the bandwidth-at-sea record in June this year on its maiden voyage.
Its superior satellite communications systems delivered unprecendented bandwidth to passengers and crew. The largest cruise ship built for a European operator so far was nominated alongside several other passenger ships, tankers, gas carriers and offshore support vessels. These were whittled down to a top five, of which MSC Meraviglia was chosen as the winner because of its record-breaking VSAT systems.
To achieve bandwidth of up to 300 Mbps, MSC involved service provider Marlink together with Intelsat’s latest high-throughput satellite and a new VT iDirect modem.
MSC Cruises used a stacked series of iDirect 9350 modems that were linked to Marlink’s Sealink VSAT. Marlink worked with Intelsat to provide data connectivity using Ku-band spot beams from an EpicNG satellite. Marlink provides widebeam C-band and Ku-band, plus spot beams, from Intelsat 29e and Intelsat 33e EpicNG satellites for MSC’s cruise ships.