Vizada: putting the customer first

Mobile satellite service provider Vizada’s focus on adding value to basic connectivity has proved to be a successful business approach. The company achieved growth during a very turbulent 2009, and is looking ahead with the introduction of new offerings to enable their customers to get the very best out of their services. Helen Jameson spoke to Erik Cueppens, Chief Executive Officer for Vizada EMEA & Asia about the MSS business, opportunities for the future and Vizada’s position in the market.

Question: 2009 was another very busy year for Vizada. Can you tell us about some of the highlights?

Erik Cueppens: 2009 was indeed a very busy year for us. We finalised the highly successful integration of Telenor Satellite Services and France Telecom Mobile Satellite Communications. For us, it was not simply a merger of two companies. In reality we created a much stronger company and built a leading global player in the mobile satellite industry. More importantly, whilst carrying out the integration, we have also been able to significantly grow our business and enhance our market position.

Today, we are the number one partner of all major mobile satellite operators – Inmarsat, Iridium and Thuraya on all MSS technologies. We are a market leader, not only in 3G services and on-demand services, but also on the new 4G broadband IP services and handheld services. One of the main benefits of the merger has been that, on top of the base connectivity services, we have probably the most extensive service portfolio in place to serve the maritime and government markets and also to support our global distribution network.
Another main outcome of the merger has been the building out of the customer care and engineering support areas of the company. We also now have the largest infrastructure in place in the world to offer Inmarsat services. And looking forward, the global broadband IP network that we have built will be very important. We can now offer a complete toolkit for the customer.

Question: What are your predictions for the MSS market in 2010?

Erik Cueppens: I think there will be many opportunities for growth in 2010. We are particularly focused on the maritime and government sectors where we expect there will be further growth opportunities in 2010 and going forward. On the maritime side, many medium-size and small vessels are still not equipped with satcoms so we aim to increase market penetration there. Another big driver for the maritime industry will be broadband services where penetration is still less than 50 percent, so there is a great opportunity to deliver broadband on board the ships.

Clearly, broadband will be an enabler and growth driver not only for business communications, but also for crew communication and to facilitate crew retention. Again, the penetration of crew communication solutions is less than 50 percent. This gives us the chance to develop that kind of application and thanks to the arrival of broadband, we see a shift taking place from voice communications for crew to Internet communications for crew. This will in turn increase communications volumes and drive growth.

Question: Which market sectors are currently driving growth in the MSS market at the moment?

Erik Cueppens: The second market on which we are focusing is government. We have seen increased demand from government and defence organisations for broadband and mobility. They need commercial mobile broadband communications services to serve that demand and these are precisely the type of services that we at Vizada are providing. In 2009, we saw government and defence organisations adopting IP and broadband technology more and more, with our support. This has not been an easy step for them to take. However, now they have established these services, they are looking for more. Now they would like to run all kinds of applications over those IP networks and we are helping those customers to achieve that.

Question: Are there any regions of the world where you are doing more business than others? Which regions stand out?

Erik Cueppens: I would say that, historically, we have a very strong leading position in Europe and the United States. However, our focus today is on developing business in Asia. We are currently putting a lot of effort into reinforcing our sales and marketing resources in that area to better support our partners in the region. On the commercial side and also in terms of services, in 2009 we extended our global broadband IP network by creating an access point for our Asian customers in Hong Kong. In terms of services and solutions we also are translating a number of our value-added applications such as SkyFile into other languages to better support our customers in that region.

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