New Skies Satellites is launching a new service aimed at aiding Broadband Maritime, a telecom service provider that offers broadband communication services for ships in the Pacific and Atlantic. The new service will allow Broadband’s customer vessels to transition autonomously between the NSS-5 Pacific Ocean region and NSS-7 Atlantic Ocean region satellites. As things stand today, a customer is required to notify an operator’s network operation center prior to a user transitioning from one satellite to another or vice versa.

These increased levels of flexibility when using broadband communication services are a significant boost, according to Zevi Kramer, CIO for Broadband Maritime, who added, “We have vessels moving between the NSS-5 and NSS-7 footprints daily. Foregoing the need to contact New Skies each time one of these vessels moves from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or vice versa, makes our operations more efficient and less complex.”

This new service also is proving to be a boon to New Skies investors. The Blackstone Group, the private- equity firm that recently acquired New Skies Satellites, is confident its purchase will pay rich rewards, and this latest deal with Broadband Maritime is more justification. David Tolley, a principal at the Blackstone Group, told Satellite Today, “New Skies, we think, offers some of the best growth opportunity in the industry. It services markets where there is better underlying secular growth and demand for the services, where either terrestrial communications infrastructures are poor or economic growth is rapid. The nature of the book of business at New Skies also bodes well for growth.”

An in-depth interview with Principal David Tolley and Lawrence Guffey, senior managing director at The Blackstone Group, can be found in the Nov. 28 issue of Satellite News. For more information about subscribing to Access Intelligence’s satellite newsletters, check out our Web site at https://www.satellitetoday.com.