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I cruise a classic
80-footer up and down the East Coast. What is the best way to have Internet
onboard without it costing a small fortune? G.V.S. via e-mail
This is becoming
the $64,000 cruising question. Or the 64,000 bits per second (64 kbps)
question, as that’s about the minimal Web speed most of us can tolerate
for work or play these days. There are several ways to get online onboard,
but none has yet emerged as a real performance/value winner. Here’s
the situation:
The big sat systems
from SeaTel and Inmarsat providers like KVH are certainly becoming capable;
check out the videophone in the new-product review on this page. But the
SeaTel 4003 service that has the speed to support the videophone costs
$35,000 for hardware and $2,500 a month for unlimited service, which might
fit your definition of a “small fortune,” and the four-foot-high
dome might compromise your boat’s appearance. An interesting alternative
is KVH’s TracNet2, which would cover your cruising range and only
needs a small Globalstar antenna (for the uplink) and a relatively small
TracVision TV antenna (for the downlink), which the boat may already have.
However, the gear is about $6,000 and service starts at $190 a month—TV
costs not included.
WiFi is sort of a wild
card. TeleSea has a WiFi-based technology and network that supposedly
provides super-fast service up to 30 miles offshore along some of the
East Coast. The hardware is inconspicuous but costs $7,500, and I’m
not sure how well the company’s network expansion plans are going.
Meanwhile regular WiFi hardware is only about $50, tiny and very fast—and
“hot spots” are popping up all over, including a growing number
of marinas. Sometimes access is even free, but regular WiFi range is very
short.
I suspect that cellular
will be the eventual solution for most coastal cruisers, but it’s
a little shaky right now. GSM, the European standard with its GPRS data
protocol, seems like a winner, and there are several GSM/GPRS products
coming out for boats, where power is much more important than size. The
new Skyewave Marine Wireless Terminal highlighted on page 56 is one.
AT&T and T-Mobile
are among the GPRS service providers, and Verizon and Sprint also have
“fast” data links using other protocols. All offer Internet
speeds around 56k, but coverage is a real issue. So far these services
are oriented to urban professionals, whose geography is about the opposite
of cruisers. For instance, there is still no fast cell data here on the
Maine coast, and the Chesapeake looks spotty (even if the coverage maps
are truthful).
Sorry I can’t be
more definitive, but I can confidently predict that the situation will
get better.
Got a marine electronics
question? Write to Electronics Q&A, Power & Motoryacht,
260 Madison Ave., 8th Fl., New York, NY 10016. Fax: (917) 256-2282. e-mail:
PMYElectronics@primediamags.com.
No phone calls please.
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