"Julian" wrote in message ...
"GJ Walsh" wrote in message ...
Has anyone heard of companies offering Broadband for boats?

Do you mean in a marina or while underway? Right now I think the closest
to full worldwide coverage at broadband speed is Tracnet. KVH have
a nice website that includes that includes good info, coverage maps and
airtime pricing: http://www.kvh.com/MarineSat/index.asp?flash=yes.

Inmarsat are launching their next generation satellites this year and next
(Inmarsat4) that I think will provide wider coverage but I have no idea
what the speed and pricing is likely to be on that.

- Julian.

I guess that you are referring to Inmarsat Regional BGAN here, where
speeds of up to 144kbit/s are quoted. This is reputed to be based off
GPRS and is now apparently recognised as being a satellite version of
the the 2.5G/3G Wireless standards.

Take a look at http://www.tiscsat.com/Inmarsatbgan1.html for info.
There is much more info avaiable on R-BAGN - just do a Google.

Equipment pricing seems quite high and I dare say that usage costs are
high too. Fortunately, R-BGAN seems to follow the GPRS model and you
are only charged for your data usage and not by time.

Hope this helps,
Mark