[Satellite TODAY 02-29-12]  Inmarsat has signed a deal with one of Singapore’s leading shipping companies. The MSS operator and its distribution partner AND Group will provide Inmarsat FleetBroadband and AND’s IPSignature2 value-added communications software to the vessels of Singapore-based Thome Ship Management.

     Thome Ship Management provides integrated ship management services for the international shipping and offshore industries. Under the new framework agreement, AND Group becomes the exclusive communications provider to Thome for Inmarsat FleetBroadband and will deliver the FleetBroadband service through a combination of pricing packages, including the Very Large Allowance (VLA) package. The terminals will be mostly FB500s, capable of supporting up to 432 kbps of standard IP data communications, but also some smaller FB250s.

     “This new deal provides plans for heavy users within our fleet and smaller packages for less intensive use. It gives us options for all vessel types, and with a large and diverse fleet like ours, that level of flexibility was very attractive. We liked the fact that the experience and reliability of the FleetBroadband service was consistently good. The addition of AND’s IPSignature2 service, offering simple and effective cost control tools, made it a powerful proposition,” Ryan Dalgado, Procurement and Supply Chain Manager for Thome Ship Management said in a statement.