Case Study
Hughes Subsea
Starlink Maritime – Fully Managed Connectivity
Hughes Subsea - Vos Start Vessel
As an integrated subsea service company, Hughes Subsea offers a comprehensive range of services to the offshore oil and gas, renewable energy, power generation, and marine civil engineering sectors.
Utilising innovative subsea techniques with modern robotic and remote tooling, their services include:
- UXO Identification and disposal
- Boulder Relocation and Debris removal
- Commercial Diving Services
- Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Technologies
Attribution: Hughes Subsea & Vroon
About Starlink
1
up to 350Mbps download speeds
0
as low as 20-40 ms latency
800
+
satellites in orbit as of feb 2023
The Challenge
Hughes Subsea required a solution to overcome the problems traditionally encountered with communications on offshore vessels. Vsat coverage, speeds, and reliability is limited offshore, unable to meet the demands of the operational requirements for Hughes Subsea marine services.
Clarus was therefore approached to implement a Starlink Maritime service on board Vroon’s Vos Start, an 87-person crew walk-to-work vessel located in the North Sea, currently on charter to Hughes Subsea.
“Starlink Maritime has vastly improved the efficiency of our offshore internet speeds by a factor of approximately 250-300x. Hughes Subsea is dedicated to being early adopters of the latest technological innovations to increase productivity and remain at the forefront of the competition within the offshore renewable and oil and gas sectors. This also ensures we provide our clients with the highest quality and best value services possible.”
Hughes Subsea
The Solution
Clarus engineers conducted a detailed survey on board the vessel, to determine to best positioning and layout of the supporting infrastructure, to meet operational demands.
The Starlink Maritime solution included:
- Dual maritime antennas
- Connected to Clarus’ SD-WAN device
- IPsec tunnel back to the aggregator in Clarus’ data centre
- True bonding algorithm applied, combining the speed of two Starlink connections, whilst being able to integrate 4G / 5G and Vsat backup where required
The Results
Maximum possible speeds achieved on-site – up to 594Mbps download / 91Mbps upload.
Latency of just 37.9 to 43.4 ms.
Increased feedback cycle and productivity of subsea operations, thanks to real-time collaboration with onshore teams.
Increased bandwidth allows the bridge and crew to share the broadband connection, improving crew welfare.
