Speedcast Puts Next Generation Communications on the Gulf

There's a certain romance to the notion of owning a boat and taking it through the Gulf of Mexico. Warm ocean breezes, tropical sunshine, clear ocean water, the potential of finding a fortune in lost Spanish gold on the bottom of the Gulf...all of this sounds great. Great, at least, until the idea of checking your email at night comes into play, or even trying to watch a video on YouTube (News - Alert). The Gulf of Mexico isn't a great place for next generation communications technology...at least, it wasn't, until a new arrangement between Tampnet and Speedcast International.

With the new arrangement recently established, Speedcast will be providing 4G LTE (News - Alert) service in the Gulf, thus allowing Tampnet to improve its presentation of next generation communications offerings. Tampnet had previously reached 25 percent of its planned coverage of the Gulf, and now should be able to reach a much higher level; reports suggest that, by the middle of 2018, Tampnet will reach almost 98 percent of all manned assets in the Gulf thanks to a powerful combination of fiber and microwave networks, offering next generation communications access to many more users in the region.

The expanded network coverage is expected to provide particular benefits to the oil and gas industry, which has been working to modernize its offshore platforms and make these safer operations, a point which is difficult at best to do without the right connectivity. Reports also note that the added connectivity will be going to drive effort in deep-water exploration as well.

Speedcast won't just be offering further connectivity, either; it's also set to offer security measures, remote video streaming, and even streaming TV services, which have gained significantly in popularity lately as an alternative to traditional cable or satellite.

Granted, it's probably not the kind of connectivity that boaters in the region were hoping for, but for those who work on offshore oil platforms or the like, this will almost certainly be good news. With the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) operations, it would be easy to see where oil platforms and the like would want to take advantage of the network of sensors and other materials that make keeping track of an operation's little details so worthwhile. Meters that better keep track of oil drawn out of the ground or processed further would just be a start here, leave aside the need to keep oil platform staffers connected and even entertained in off hours.

All of this requires connectivity, and thanks to Speedcast and Tampnet, that connectivity is about to get a lot more robust in fairly short order.