A few months after the first of Intelsat’s next generation EpicNG satellites entered service, Global Eagle Entertainment (GEE) has signed an expanded contract with Intelsat to deliver high-performance broadband connectivity across five continents and multiple vertical markets across air, land and sea.

Alongside C- and Ku-band services on eight existing satellites, the agreement will also see GEE use two of the new EpicNG high-throughout satellites, making three in total. The EpicNG platform aims to deliver greater bandwidth and faster speeds for several sectors, including marine, and with two Epic NG satellites already launched Intelsat claims that customers are already seeing 165 per cent efficiency increases on legacy equipment. The company claims that customers will see potential efficiency gains of up to 330 per cent when combined with next generation hardware.

“Our business model is based on helping our customers deliver an at-home experience to millions of people moving around the planet – on planes, cruise ships, superyachts and more,” says Abel Avellan, president and chief strategy officer at GEE. “The performance, scalability and global reach of Intelsat’s solutions will nicely complement our extensive global ecosystem of satellite networks, enabling us to provide ubiquitous  broadband connectivity and to shift resources quickly – critical in the mobility markets we serve.”

“Many of the services superyachts consume are high-end, and broadband communications is no different,” Chris Insall – Intelsat’s senior principal product manager, Maritime Services – tells SuperyachtNews. “This is why Global Eagle Entertainment has secured the ability, using Intelsat’s Globalized Network, to deliver the high quality broadband services superyacht owners need anywhere in the world, especially in the regions where demand is greatest. With Intelsat’s combination of traditional satellite services and the overlay of high-throughput connectivity from the Intelsat EpicNG platform,” Insall continues, “superyacht owners in the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean regions to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean regions will have access to services such as interactive video, crew communications and logistics, as well as Internet and TV services for passengers, who are demanding the same level of service at sea that they experience at home.”

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