Danish shipping giant Maersk has selected Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson to build a new communications network to link its fleet of over 500 vessels.
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Currently, the company only uses satellite communications technology to connect its ships. Ericsson will fit the fleet with antennas and GSM base stations, supporting a combination of mobile and satellite communications.
"For the shipping industry, mobile communication provides the opportunity to employ new and efficient ways of addressing fleet management, managing delivery times, improving interaction with vessels, enabling proactive issue resolution and prompt information sharing with customers and even improving energy efficiency," Ericsson said in statement.
"We’re quite pleased to be the first fleet to be connected with mobile communication technology," said Søren Toft, vice president of Maersk line operations. "We believe it would provide us good opportunities to run our fleet more efficiently."