Jan De Nul Group has moved its entire fleet of 82 vessels and jack-up barges to Castor Marine’s global VSAT and Iridium L-band services on a long-term contract to guarantee solid vessel connectivity.

As all vessels operate around the globe, Castor Marine was challenged to migrate vessels remotely to its network using the existing equipment onboard, within a tight deadline. 98 per cent of the fleet was successfully migrated within 3 months after contract signing, with up to 6 migrations a day.

Castor Marine delivers a tailored VSAT solution for Jan De Nul’s fleet, with quality of services specified on the customer’s VLAN level. The Jan De Nul fleet benefits from the flexibility Castor Marine can provide in its global VSAT network allowing Jan De Nul Group to easily scale up, based on the ad hoc, dedicated high bandwidth demands per vessel.

Included in the internet package are high-quality onboard voice services based on local Belgian telephone numbers for the vessels, which allows cost efficient phone calls at local rates.

Along with the VSAT, Iridium and VoIP services, Castor Marine delivered 15 new Sailor 900 VSAT antennas and Sailor 4300 Iridium Certus antennas replacing existing hardware onboard. For the newbuild nextgen offshore jack-up installation vessel Voltaire and the offshore heavy lift vessel Les Alizés, Castor Marine supplied a complete new set of antenna systems based on the recently launched Sailor 1000 XTR VSAT antennas, including below deck equipment. 

“It is nice to work with an agile and technically advanced partner. Flexibility is very important to Jan De Nul to cater for temporary project upgrades and downgrades. Castor Marine monitors these developments and communication lines are very short. We attach great importance to mutual trust. So far, everything is going as desired with our new KU & L-Band supplier,” said Nils Crabeel, communication manager at Jan De Nul Group.

“It’s an honour to serve the Jan De Nul fleet with our services as Network Operator. I’m proud that we can deliver our flexible airtime solutions with high bandwidth capabilities to Jan De Nul on a global scale and that we can match the expectations of Jan De Nul with respect to high quality, flexibility and service levels,” stated Mark Olthuis, director maritime offshore & energy.