RAD’s Vmux products reduce the bandwidth required for telephony services to ships at sea, slashing costs for maritime communications

Access to telephony services from any point on the globe has become a given today. In the maritime sector, owners and managers of cruise ships, cargo and passenger carriers, megayachts, tankers and even deep-sea fishing vessels are expected to provide telephony access for their passengers and crew at all times, from all locations.

 

For the most part, the only communications option available is to use expensive satellite links with limited bandwidth capacity. As a result, providing cost-effective telephony services to customers for the maritime application presents several challenges.

 

Ship owners and managers aiming to lower operating expenses need to reduce bandwidth utilization. To increase profits, service providers must augment the voice capacity and connectivity of their existing bandwidth without adding network resources.

Reducing bandwidth requirements is only part of the equation. Any solution must also support all existing signaling protocols and telephony services.

 

To meet these needs, RAD’s Vmux voice trunking products offer voice compression and Abis optimization that minimize bandwidth utilization on costly satellite segments.

Merchant ships, fishing vessels or any other commercial liner will normally install a telephone exchange, offering a limited number of FXS connections for their crew. By deploying a Vmux-110 remote site voice trunking gateway in each ship, up to 30 voice channels can be transmitted over only 128 kbps. At the control site on shore, a Vmux-2100 voice trunking gateway provides a central site solution, compressing up to 496/384 voice channels over a single E1/T1, serial or IP link. Enhanced modem, fax and DTMF relay capabilities further reduce bandwidth utilization, and ensure proper functioning of all telephony services.

On a cruise ship where hundreds of people want mobile phone access via their own personal handsets, RAD’s Vmux-400 Abis optimization gateway can be deployed, offering up to 3:1 bandwidth optimization on the Abis (BTS-BSC) segment, including optimization of GPRS and EDGE data protocols. The Vmux-400 allows cruise ship operators to deploy a new service in a cost-effective way.

All of RAD's Vmux products enable transparent support for any standard or proprietary signaling protocol including SS7, ISDN PRI, Q.Sig, and DPNSS. Users can continue to receive all services, including fax, IVR, dial-up, and credit cards. No retraining or specialized personnel are required to operate the equipment. Besides delivering superior bandwidth-efficiency, Vmux products ensure call quality that rivals that of PSTN toll calls.