Vobal Technologies Adds On-Net Calling to its Maritime Satellite Multi-Voice Services

On-Net provides unlimited, global telephone service between fleet vessels and home office - for one, low cost monthly fee. Traditional barriers to cost-effective shore-to-ship voice calling have been eliminated.Evanston, IL February 20, 2012

The company

The company, an Inmarsat Certified Solutions Provider, launched its Vobal S2 optimized VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) product with Multi-Voice capability in 2011 to meet high market demand for additional voice lines. This allows the vessel operator to segregate calling for vessel operations from crew personal requirements. The Vobal S2 VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Multi-Voice, On-Net and S3 Maritime GSM products work with all Inmarsat FleetBroadband terminals and VSAT terminals, including systems that switch between the two.

“Vobal’s On-Net telephone service is a maritime communication industry first,” says John Nix, founder and CEO of Vobal Technologies. “Vobal’s clients simply integrate Vobal On-Net research into their corporate telephone systems and initiating a telephone call to one of their fleet vessels is as simple as dialing an office telephone extension number.”

Vobal’s S2 and S3 products are designed exactly for use on Inmarsat FBB Standard IP Data channels, providing the lowest cost basis for Inmarsat satellite bandwidth backhaul. They are as well technically compatible in L-Band, Ka-Band and/or Ku-Band “managed services” solutions which exercise failover routers. Vobal’s products provide up to eight concurrent voice calls, unparalleled international DID numbers for each line, integration with vessel’s PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange) or analog phones and Crew GSM mobile phones.

The advances in maritime communications

“In spite of all the advances in maritime communications, the costs for shoreside correspondents to call Inmarsat equipped ships at sea have always been expensive. As a matter of fact, voice calls to ocean code 870 often cost several dollars per minute. Alternative single or two-stage dialing platforms require complicated dialing schemes and PIN codes – with only marginal cost savings. Vobal On-Net is a very low cost solution that’s easy to install and use,” stated Ronnie Raviv, COO of Vobal Technologies.

Vobal Technologies provides the first commercial VoIP telephone service certified by Inmarsat to run over FleetBroadband’s Standard IP. The Vobal system is characterized by exceptionally high quality voice and efficient utilization of bandwidth – only 6kbps Fully Loaded means that it consumes less than 1 megabyte of data for every 20 minutes of voice traffic. This unparalleled and patented innovation is currently serving Crew and Passengers on commercial merchant ships, offshore oilfield support vessels and small cruise ships. The Vobal VoIP research is utilized by Global Marine Network’s award winning suite of Redport “VoIP enabled” Satellite Routers, which as well include Vobal’s multi-voice and optional On-Net features.