At home most of us are accustomed to high speed internet, it’s easy to facetime with friends or livestream sporting events in high resolution, driving your connected car while asking Siri for an update on your agenda or the stock market.
Contrarily, as luxury yacht owner you often need minutes of spare time just to check your email.
However this will change dramatically in the near future. Elon is shooting thousands of small LEO satellites into orbit, while the telecom technology companies are racing for the fastest and largest 5G networks. Early adopters are already plugged in.
Last week Steve Jurvetson, board member of Starlink, set up a terminal and connected to their sats orbiting overhead, a beta test is scheduled later this year.
For a point of reference, a normal home fibre connection is about 80 Mbps, a reasonable V-Sat connection at sea might be 5-20Mbps. To watch 4K video from netflix or youtube, you would need 25 Mbps. In an interview Elon suggests that starlink might be capable of reaching 1 Gbps.
So when the high speed networks are available you want to be connected, not only at home, or on the road but also in the mediterranean. Or for the bold sailor, somewhere between the icy peaks of the arctic.
How to make sure your (new build) luxury yacht is future proof? This is the time to invest in future-proof communication equipment.
Reliable high speed networks with lower latency and with greater bandwidth are able to handle much more connected devices. Along with it all new kinds of technology will emerge, and you want to be able to enjoy it.
Domotica will reach new levels, allowing not only for devices to be connected to the internet, but also to be connected and communicate to each other. Allowing you to control any device from any other. Some “driver” assist features are already available for yachting, but full autonomous yachting features will need the speed and low latency similar to 5G.
So if you are in the market for a cellular router or vsat antennas for your boat, and you are investing in a system which has to be future proof for the next 3-5 years. Then you should absolutely be thinking of installing 5G compatible technology. And here comes the surprise.
Your focus should be on cabling and connectors. The 5G network is rolled out using a much higher frequency than the current 4G frequencies. And higher frequencies lose their power down coax cables.This means thicker and shorter cabling. Likewise, connection should be absolutely perfect. A bad mounted connection could mean a 20-40% loss at 3.5 Ghz.
Think about all hardware items which are laborious to replace, these are the items which must be able to handle the pace. All of the other items you can purchase when they arrive on the market, well tested and bug free.
If you need help to make your (new build) luxury yacht future proof? Give us a call.
We make sure you will be ready.
