When I left we were still trying to figure this out.
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There is a monthly data cap and since its a company system crews (at least where Im at) are prevented from using massive data hogs like streaming games onboard. Video streaming is also capped at a lower resolution. If the vessel is pushing up against the data cap crew wifi gets shut down. The cost of going over the data cap is pretty large so the company has made it pretty clear they arent F’ing around with exceeding it. Some guys have gotten their own Starlink accounts and transmitters for their rooms.
It can be a bit of a shock to the deep sea guys who may have come off a Govt charter with free high end wifi across the worlds oceans, but thats the breaks. On the lakes you are in port or near shore in cell range pretty frequently.
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What size crews typically?
Id like to know which company or government does this. All the government contracts I’ve done have data limits
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For a four-man crew that is 250 GIGABYTES/GB/MAN/MONTH (NOT MB).
For a 100 man crew that is 1 GIGABYTE/GB/MAN/MONTH (ALSO NOT MB).
250 GB/MAN /MONTH is more than enough for a boat crew member.
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Polar has Starlink, works great up and down US West coast, to Valdez,AK. Hawaii, from US west to Luzon and down to Singapore. I don’t think we have seen 4 blips in 2 years. Can send and receive large files via email, upload 1 gig to the cloud, play Xbox live, stream video services. No clue what sort of volume we use as a ship of 25 or the cost. Complaining about slow internet ended the day we got Starlink, and the issues have been almost zero. We have 2 marine antennas.
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And that depends on the client/contract. Gov’t division for the most part doesn’t unless the crew is paying for a shoreside connection out of pocket for while they’re at the dock.
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I haven’t exactly seen behind the curtain, But I suspect when you hear about vessels “Testing” starlink, they are checking to see what the baseline “working” internet usage would be with faster internet. I’ve been on 11/12 person crews with a 1gb daily cap, which would give the crew only 1/3rd of the total plan, giving the ship’s ~5 terminals about 650 gb for operations, looking at Windy, downloading manuals, chart corrections, email, ect. My current ride either has a speed cap, or doesn’t actually have starlink turned on, but I suspect that’s another way to give the vessel priority internet access. Long story short, I don’t think the math is as simple when calculating data allotments per person.
I was just thinking there has to be some sort of higher, concierge service for starlink when you look at cruise ships, when you’ve got 5,000 people onboard, plus vessel operations which has to be be data heavy even without guest and crew wifi. I would imagine a cruise ship could eat though a terabyte in a matter of hours, but I was just next to a Disney ship that just had the two Maritime antennas mounted on the mast. Perhaps some Pixie dust and magic, or maybe the $2/Gb is just priced in, but I’m amazed the two dishes are all you need.
Does ECO pay more than other companies that provide internet for crew in order to remain competitive in attracting employees?
No, but any govt vessel I’ve been on has starlink provided by the client/company.
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That’s unfortunate but not surprising. The GOM supply boat companies come and go. Ensco and many other long gone operators come to mind. When they start being non-competitive in pay and benefits they eventually sell or just stop operating. The owners retire comfortably and the mariners move on to the next gig. One good thing about that is the smart mariners read the writing on the wall, upgrade and increase their knowledge which opens more doors both at sea and on shore.
Sorry, was that laughter out loud? To answer your question though, no. No they don’t.
Though to be fair, we do have internet on board (my vessel… others mileage may vary), to the ship’s computers, and with a 256kbps connection on the best of days. So there is internet. Is it useful? Not really, since even Gmail for the ship’s email account doesn’t always load with that bandwidth allowance.
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This removes ECO from consideration as an employer for a large portion of the better qualified mariners. But I am sure they know that already.
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I"m not so sure. Like everything else, it will be a reactive as opposed to a proactive change when boats can’t be crewed because of it.
Poling n Cutler does not. Although my boat does because our engineer installed it and maintains the service. We pay him out of the grub money for both crews. Its worth it, but it would be nice if ownership pitched in a little bit for one single comfort for the crews.
No travel pay. No 401k match. And a contract that is deliberately vague enough to keep day rates down for a variety of positions.
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If you want internet you have to pretty much work for the union where you will have more “workers rights”. Pay is lower, hitches are longer but comforts are there. Pick your poison.
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18-22 on average through the operating season.
I’ve had several guys, including a CHENG say they worked car carriers on US Gov’t/Military charters and onboard internet during the trips was top notch. As to the truthfulness of the statements, I always take em with a grain of salt since this was after the guys heard the fleet was upgrading our internet services so they were probably swinging for the fences with comparisons so they could get better stuff
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As soon as it became available just about everyone in Alaska installed Starlink.
I haven’t even turned my InReach on in at least a year.
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Interlake has starlink on their boats
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FYI that can be solved by using a dedicated email client like Thunderbird and setting it up to not download images automatically. Text-only email loads in the blink of an eye on very little bandwidth. I remember reading my mail on Iridium back in the day, IIRC it was a 11.5 kbps connection, and downloading a mail only took a couple of seconds.
Edit: I looked it up, the connection was actually 2.4 kbps with our 9500 handset. This might seem entirely useless in these days of widely available satellite broadband, but it worked well for text communication. I even sometimes used it to download low resolution weather forecast jpegs since the weatherfax was a bit shit at high latitudes. I had my father download the image from the weather service web page, downscale it and send it as an e-mail attachment, but those still took a few minutes to download. Back then you could also set up your browser to not download images automatically, so browsing the web was nominally possible but not really practical.
My impression was not of a uselessly slow connection, even though I was spoiled with 56 kbps on shore, but of a magically powerful communications tool. Before Iridium the only link to the outside world was the HF radio, and suddenly I could write a message to someone anywhere in the world and get an immediate response. It was a true game changer, and it took over a decade to see its darker side, but that is a discussion for another time…