Princess Cruises, one of Carnival Corporation’s cruise brands, is set to become the first global cruise ship fleet to access the SES O3b mPOWER network, a hybrid medium earth orbit (MEO) and geostationary (GEO) VSAT satellite service.
The new agreement between Carnival and SES will see the satellite operator become a Premier Innovation Partner with the cruise company through to 2023, teaming up with Carnival’s Corporation’s Global Experience and Innovation unit to work on improvements in the design, creation and delivery of new guest experience innovations, as well as technical platform development for business operations.
The companies have already worked together since 2017 on delivering the MedallionNet onboard Wi-Fi service to Princess’s flagship MedalllionClass vessels, but Carnival says that the expanded partnership reflects SES’s growing role in enabling IoT, Edge, Cloud and shoreside intelligence synchronisation capabilities for the fleet.
The Princess MedallionClass infrastructure will be fully active on 11 ships by the end of 2020 with a new ship activated every 60 days, the company says, providing multi-Gbps capacity to the vessels as required.
“The future is now, with real solutions and proven technology delivering real experiences to floating smart cities around the globe powering a coveted experience,” said John Padgett, Chief Experience and Innovation Officer for Carnival Corporation.
“SES’ integration into the Global Experience and Innovation team not only provides world-leading connectivity technology and fuelling OceanMedallion capabilities, but most importantly provides expertise that is passionate about creating amazing experiences through the fusion of creativity, story, connectivity and media across the world.”
“Our first joint creation, MedallionNet, has significantly elevated the cruise experience for our guests and crew, but more importantly stimulated the creation of leading-edge, Cloud-based Edge compute models that were previously considered impossible.”
