In a new effort to position its market-leading mini-VSAT
Broadbandsm service as the maritime industry's premier content
delivery platform, KVH Industries, Inc., (Nasdaq:KVHI) is
implementing a detailed four-part strategy that will bring a
variety of economical and convenient content services to mariners
for the first time. Martin Kits van Heyningen, President and CEO of
KVH Industries, will present details of the plan at the Digital
Ship Maritime CIO Forum today. Mr. Kits van Heyningen and a team of
KVH representatives will be available to discuss the solution at
the Nor-Shipping show in Oslo, Norway, this week.
"There's really not a lot of serious debate about the tremendous
value of digital charts, high resolution weather data, e-learning
programs, or even news, sports, music, and movies onboard ships,"
said Mr. Kits van Heyningen. "The concern of fleet IT managers is
the high cost of transmitting this data over satellite links,
especially when using the services of legacy L-band providers. It's
been so expensive, in fact, that most large files are recorded on
DVDs and physically mailed to ports to await a ship's arrival so
they may be manually brought onboard and loaded onto the vessel's
network. This is a slow, expensive, unreliable way to deliver data
and it can't possibly keep up with the booming use of IP-enabled
devices and the need for improved data to meet new environmental,
training, and labor regulations. Our strategy is to create an
economical way to deliver the data our customers want and need
onboard their vessels."
KVH recognizes that many of the large files needed onboard
vessels are not unique, proprietary data files, but common content
used by many different customers, like electronic charts, weather
forecasts, training courses, digital newspapers, television news
and sports clips, music, and movies. In the past, when these large
files were transmitted individually to ships, the satellite service
costs were too prohibitive to be practical. Even so-called "all you
can eat" services usually had fair use policies limiting or
blocking transmission of large files. KVH's goal was to introduce a
new, more economical way to deliver content to vessels "over the
top" of its mini-VSAT Broadband network. The new solution
accomplishes this goal by taking advantage of additional network
capacity via advanced multicasting technology.
"There are four major parts to our content delivery strategy,"
explained Mr. Kits van Heyningen. "We needed to increase the
capacity of our network to handle the additional data; develop a
way to reliably multicast a single file that could be received by
all customers in a single transmission; develop an onboard server
to receive the broadcasted files, determine if the recipient had
paid for the content, and store it for access by onboard devices;
and make lots of good content available for subscribers to our new
service. We've accomplished all four goals, and are excited to
introduce mariners to a completely new service that will change the
way they live and work onboard in the upcoming months."
The first step was expansion of the capacity on the mini-VSAT
Broadband network. This began in late 2012, almost immediately
following deployment of the final satellite transponder that
completed the world's widest maritime VSAT coverage area. In all,
KVH uses 15 Ku-band transponders overlaid with 3 global C-band
transponders to provide worldwide coverage with its broadband
connectivity. The capacity of the network has been effectively
doubled over the past nine months with the deployment of Variable
Coding, Spreading and Modulation (VCSM) technology, a significantly
more efficient data delivery protocol than KVH's earlier
technology. KVH has a second major upgrade planned for the latter
half of 2013 that will provide another major increase in the
effective network capacity.
The second major initiative was upgrading the TracPhone®
terminals used to deliver the mini-VSAT Broadband service. KVH
developed the new Integrated CommBox Modem (ICM), an integrated
belowdecks unit that includes the antenna control unit, CommBox™
Ship/Shore Network Manager, ArcLight® spread spectrum modem, VoIP,
Ethernet switch, and Wi-Fi capabilities in a single 2U enclosure.
KVH's new TracPhone V3-IP, V7-IP, and V11-IP all use the new ICM,
allowing all of KVH's mini-VSAT Broadband-compatible products to
receive and decode multicast content. KVH also offers a stand-alone
CommBox server, making the IP-MobileCast™ service available to all
of KVH's mini-VSAT Broadband subscribers.
To deliver multicast content over the mini-VSAT Broadband
network, KVH is introducing its IP-MobileCast content delivery
service, which is expected to be available later this year. The
IP-MobileCast service will use proprietary software designed to
provide advanced error correction, compression, and validation of
data integrity throughout the transmission from shore to ship.
Shoreside servers encode files for transmission and queue them for
multicast delivery "over the top" of the mini-VSAT Broadband
network. The IP-MobileCast service's patented Forward Error
Correction (FEC) technology will help ensure that CommBox servers
on ships receive each file in perfect condition the first time it
is transmitted. The unique FEC algorithms deliver the highest level
of file reliability by accommodating intermittent non-continuous
transmission, which might happen when large transmissions are
interrupted by prioritized network traffic or in very poor weather
conditions.
The final initiative in KVH's strategy is ensuring that a
variety of high-quality content is available to send over the new
IP-MobileCast service. In a major step toward this goal, the
company recently acquired Headland Media, the maritime industry's
leading provider of rights-approved news, sports, movies, IPTV,
IP-radio, and training films. KVH plans to use the IP-MobileCast
service to deliver much of Headland Media's premium content to
subscribers automatically, without additional charge beyond the
price of the content, over the mini-VSAT Broadband network. In
addition, a major effort is being undertaken to form alliances with
application providers to deliver electronic charts, weather
forecasts, and other mission-critical content for vessel
operations. To that end, a cooperative arrangement was announced
with Jeppesen for electronic chart delivery.
"Our goal is to offer our customers economical access to all the
data they want and need onboard their vessels," concluded Mr. Kits
van Heyningen. "By developing smarter ways to use our network
connectivity and delivering large data files to vessels
efficiently, we're able to save our customers money and provide
them a significantly higher level of service on the transmissions
sent and received under their contracted rate plans."
Additional information about KVH's new IP-MobileCast service,
TracPhone V-IP series terminals, and the mini-VSAT Broadband
network is available at http://www.minivsat.com/vip. Information
about Headland Media news, sports, entertainment, and training
content is available at www.headlandmedia.com.
About KVH Industries, Inc.
KVH Industries is a leading manufacturer of solutions that
provide global high-speed Internet, television, and voice services
via satellite to mobile users at sea, on land, and in the air.
KVH's Headland Media group is the maritime industry's leading
provider of rights-approved news, sports, music, and movies, as
well as the Walport Training video series. KVH is based in
Middletown, RI, with facilities in Illinois, Denmark, Norway, the
UK, Singapore, the Philippines, India, and Japan.
This press release contains forward-looking
statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking
statements include, for example, statements regarding the timing
and occurrence of KVH's new service rollout plans, the
functionality, characteristics, quality, cost and performance of
KVH products and technology, as well as customer demand,
preferences, requirements, and expectations. The actual results
could differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking
statements. Factors that might cause such differences include,
among others, uncertainties regarding the time needed to complete
2013 initiatives, potential unanticipated technical or legal
impediments, unanticipated costs and KVH's dependence on the
availability of third-party satellites and services to support
broadcasts to mobile antennas. These and other risk factors are
discussed in more detail in KVH's most recent Form 10-Q filed with
the SEC. KVH does not assume any obligation to update its
forward-looking statements to reflect new information or
developments.
KVH Industries, Inc., has used, registered, or applied to
register its trademarks in the USA and other countries around the
world, including the following marks: KVH, KVH logo, TracPhone,
CommBox, IP-MobileCast, mini-VSAT Broadband and the mini-VSAT
Broadband logo, and the banded, dome-shaped housing of its
satellite antennas. Other trademarks are the property of their
respective companies.
CONTACT: KVH Industries, Inc.
Nicole Mongillo
+1 401-847-3327
nmongillo@kvh.com
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