SES O3b mPOWER network for Princess Cruises
February 3, 2020
Princess Cruises, a brand of the Carnival Corporation, has announced a new dimension in its connectivity partnership with SES and will become the first global cruise ship fleet with early access to SES’s O3b mPOWER network augmenting the Princess MedallionClass experience as it scales across the fleet.
SES is enabling global, high-performance connectivity to Princess Cruises using its hybrid medium earth orbit (MEO) and geostationary (GEO) network. The combination of the globally-deployed Princess MedallionClass ships, the Ocean Guest Experience “Cloud Connected” Platform and SES’s multi-constellations satellite network not only creates unmatched and ubiquitous global Wi-Fi service levels, but ensures seamless land/sea digital experience enablement including OceanView TV (OTT, Mobile and VoD) and is disrupting the traditional commodity satellite bandwidth model.
As the innovation partner for Princess MedallionClass, Carnival Corporation’s Global Experience and Innovation unit is elevating the SES partner relationship through 2023. The Premier Innovation Partner status makes SES a fully-integrated development partner of Carnival Corporation’s Global Experience and Innovation unit, spanning design, creation and delivery for game-changing connected guest experience innovations, technical platform development, intelligence and hybrid cloud and edge compute enablement. As a result, Princess MedallionClass, which is enabled by the OceanMedallion and powered by SES, will be the first cruise ships to access SES’s ground-breaking O3b mPOWER satellite-based communications system. The SES brand will also be incorporated into the OceanMedallion, further symbolising the integrated relationship.
The expanded partnership recognises SES’s integral role in enabling the Ocean Guest Experience PlatformTM with real-time xIoTTM, edge, cloud and shoreside intelligence synchronisation on Princess MedalllionClass Ships. Princess MedallionClass will be fully active on 11 ships by the end of 2020 with a new ship activated every 60 days.
The game-changing O3b mPOWER from SES will ensure that Princess MedallionClass Ships are not constrained by traditional bandwidth capacity plans. As a Premiere Global Experience and Innovation partner, SES will keep bandwidth ahead of demand with multi-Gbps capacity whenever and wherever needed. Whether activating a new MedallionClass ship, visualizing real-time ship digital clones or powering virtual ship/shore collaboration, bandwidth constraints never impact innovation team access, speed or engagement fidelity.
Furthermore, dynamic bandwidth deployment on demand through a fully-managed, high-performance ship access point to a shoreside end-point holistically ensures unique ship itineraries and specialised guest events always meet the highest service levels possible from San Francisco to Singapore and Helsinki to Hobart. Whether a guest is streaming original content via OceanView, placing a wager on a big game with Ocean SportsBook, playing massive multi-player video game, streaming video from favourite streaming service or checking home security cameras, SES’s O3b mPOWER provides dynamic bandwidth giving Princess guests the land-like online performance they expect.
“The future is now with real solutions and proven technology delivering real experiences to floating smart cities around the globe powering a coveted experience. 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,” said John Padgett, chief experience and innovation officer for Carnival Corporation. “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.”
“The relentless focus of the Princess Cruises and Carnival Corporation’s Global Experience and Innovation teams to create personalized, simplified and connected guest experiences inspired us to push the boundaries of the connectivity norm at sea, and set a higher benchmark for connected guest experiences,” said JP Hemingway, CEO of SES Networks, the data-centric business unit of SES. “With MedallionNet, we helped deliver a new and holistic model that sets an entirely new standard for cruise ship connectivity around the world. By extending and expanding our Premier Innovation Partner relationship, we are leveraging our unprecedented position in multi-constellation satellite networks and consistently focusing on delivering high performance and pushing the envelope of what’s possible.”