Speedcast International and Inmarsat have reached an agreement on the sale of Speedcast’s primary Fleet Xpress, FleetBroadband and Fleet One service contracts to Inmarsat.
This agreement marks another significant step for Speedcast as it looks to emerge from its Chapter 11 proceedings announced earlier this year.
However, it is still subject to approval by the US courts overseeing the company’s financial restructuring.
Through this agreement, Speedcast customers that are transferred to Inmarsat will be guaranteed continuing access to the satcoms connectivity services.
This covers both Speedcast’s L-band maritime contracts in which Inmarsat serves as the primary connectivity on board, as well as the full Inmarsat Fleet Xpress portfolio from Speedcast.
Ronald Spithout, Inmarsat Maritime President, (pictured) said: “Our first priority is to ensure that these transitioning Speedcast customers can continue to access Inmarsat’s reliable global maritime connectivity services and our growing range of value-added services now and into the future.
“With Inmarsat’s ongoing, fully-funded technology roadmap, these customers will benefit from the next-generation of Ka-band and L-band satellites that we are launching over the next few years. These will provide both additional capacity and capabilities to the network.
“Among the seven new satellites scheduled for launch in the next few years will be the first ever high throughput satellites (HTS) dedicated to the Arctic region,” he explained.
Andre Eerland, Speedcast’s Vice President, Commercial Maritime, added: “This agreement enables Speedcast to further strengthen our focus in the commercial maritime sector, delivering our leading global VSAT services, together with global L-band back-up capabilities.
“We pride ourselves on providing a flexible, high quality service that meets market demands and addresses the challenges of maritime connectivity. Taking this step allows us to consolidate our core connectivity services, which are scalable across all market needs, while remaining at the forefront of the maritime industry,” he said.
Speedcast will continue to deliver managed services to its commercial maritime clients with primary VSAT and other non-Inmarsat mobile satellite services (MSS) on board, and will maintain its Inmarsat Distribution Partner status to deliver existing MSS back-up services, with no impact to customer operations or support.
Inmarsat will take on the management of the transitioned maritime contracts, as well as the 24/7 operations and support for customers through its network operations and customer support centres.
