Q&A Gottlieb International Container ships. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock. Understanding the maritime VSAT business The maritime VSAT broadband business is expanding at a significant rate but there are hurdles that must be overcome before a stage of massmarket adoption can be reached, not least the impact of the global economic downturn that has hurt the industry to such an extent. Alan Gottlieb, Managing Director at Gottlieb International Group Inc., has developed an intimate understanding of the commercial maritime and oil and gas maritime VSAT markets and Helen Jameson was fortunate enough to speak to him about the prospects for VSAT on the high seas, and the issues that all service providers should be aware of when selling their systems to potential customers. Question: Alan, you have spent a great deal of time looking closely at the maritime Satcom market, especially in terms of VSAT broadband from the perspective of the ship owners. What have you found out about how they view broadband VSAT? Alan Gottlieb: One of the biggest revelations that I found when conducting my research into the maritime sector was that only sophisticated IT departments at the very top end of the industry really understand what they can do with VSAT and why they should have it. When you talk to most ship owners, they will say to you that they only use 100 megabytes of data a month so why should they spend $30,000 or $40,000 on a VSAT antenna and $2,000 or $3,000 a month for the service? To better understand the selling obstacle, I always use this analogy: if you only had four light bulbs burning in your house and that was all the electricity you used, and I came along to sell you a generator for $20,000 dollars that would increase your supply of electricity twenty fold, you would balk at the cost. But, if I explained to you with all of that extra electricity, you could wash your clothes, cook your food, air condition your house and be entertained, then you would think that the outlay makes sense. Hence, the first thing you have to do is to explain to ship owners all of the things they can do with a fixed-priced VSAT connection that they could not afford to do before because they were paying by the byte. The next thing you have to do is to offer the customer the help he needs to transition to a fixed cost VSAT model. Ship owners have many questions regarding the management of VSAT aboard a vessel and they need to be resolved. For 30 w w w.satellite-evolution.com | September/October 2009 Gottlieb.pmd 30 20/09/2009, 20:53