GLOBAL COMMUNICATOR

Intellian's FB500 keeps the ones and zeros flowing reliably during rough weather and at high latitudes.

- DAVID SCHMIDT

CALL IT A FIRST-WORLD problem, but rain can cause performance issues for some satellite-communication frequencies. This isn't because onboard satcom equipment is faulty or inadequate-it's not. Rather, certain bands of radio-frequency energy physically attenuate as they travel through precipitation-streaked time and space. ¶Fortunately, not all satcom frequencies suffer from rain-fade issues, and hardware including Intellian's recently unveiled FB500 terminal-already exists to help leverage this bandwidth. ¶ Supporting Intellian's hardware is Inmarsat's FleetBroadband (FBB) service, which delivers a near-global (99.9 percent availability) rain-fade-free service by harnessing the lower-frequency L-band (1 to 2 GHz) range. The trade-off, however, is speed: FBB delivers speeds-up and down-that are measured in kilobits per second (Kbps), a comparatively pedestrian pace that's fine for most applications but still a long row home from VSAT's metrics. ¶ While Inmarsat debuted FBB service in 2007, and while Intellian has manufactured FBB terminals since 2010, the fourth-generation FB500 antenna ($15,800) has the company's latest hardware innovations and refinements. This includes Inmarsat's latest L-band modem, plus the ability to connect to shore-based 4G/5G/LTE cellular networks to deliver lowest-cost routing for coastal cruising. ¶ With regard to equipment, an FB500 consists of a radome-enclosed antenna (called an abovedeck unit, or ADU) that's stabilized across three axes and that delivers unlimited azimuth rotation, a belowdecks unit (a black box that is typically rack-mounted), coaxial cabling and a power cable (either DC or, if AC is required, via Intellian's AC/DC power supply adapter) that powers the BDU. Anetwork operator's SIM card slots into the back of the BDU, which broadcasts its connectivity to networked devices via a built-in Wi-Fi antenna. The system has an embedded and software-based Private Automatic Branch Exchange, which supports