By
Alice Chambers |
Telenor Maritime has signed a five-year agreement to provide wi-fi, mobile services and ship-to-shore connectivity for Polferries’ passenger vessels.
The provider will update Polferries’ 4G mobile service to 5G and offer affordable wi-fi packages for those sailing onboard the operator’s five vessels. Packages will be accessible via an onboard portal on passengers’ personal devices.
“The ferries are an important link between Sweden and Poland, and carry large amounts of cargo and passengers between the two countries,” said Roger Vimme, sales director for ferries at Telenor Maritime. “Polferries’ ambition is to optimise and improve passenger experience by allowing passengers to use their phones, tablets and laptops onboard – both for business and leisure purposes.”
Telenor Maritime foresees that prices will decrease as the use of maritime roaming increases.
“We see a substantial increase in data traffic,” said Lars Erik Lunøe, CEO at Telenor Maritime. “Compared to pre-pandemic 2019, the data usage has increased by 50 per cent. People are used to having uninterrupted access to the internet, no matter where they are. The need for larger volumes of data at a lower price will increase by roughly 20 per cent each year going forward, and we plan to increase the download speed from 450 megabytes per second to 1 gigabyte in four years.”
Telenor Maritime is also testing new technology to meet the demand of future passengers by implementing low-earth orbit satellites in various destinations.