The FX 500 FleetBroadband terminal is the latest-generation maritime communication systems operating on the Inmarsat FleetBroadband Satellite System. It is compact and easy to install. The FX 500 terminal is Inmarsat approved for use with XpressLink.
Using Inmarsat’s most advanced commercial communication satellites, the FX 500 FleetBroadband terminal provides simultaneous access to clear digital voice or fax, high-speed Standard IP (for email, FTP, web browsing etc.) and Streaming IP data (for real-time streaming video etc.) and SMS. It makes it easier for the Captain to download the latest weather and navigational charts while the crew members can call, talk, send and receive text messages and email around the world. Moreover there will be no noticeable degradation of data bandwidth when the terminal is at the edge of satellite coverage unlike other classes of FleetBroadband terminals.
The FX 500 FleetBroadband terminal offers data speeds of up to 432kbps with many value-added features:
The FX 500 is a high performance satellite communication terminal with the salient features:
The FX 500 includes a primary handset with a large colour LCD display and mobile phone type keys for making/receivingphone calls, making selective terminal configuration changes, sending and receiving SMS messages, including larger SMS content of greater than 160 characters as multipart or segmented messages. This feature is popular for the Captain and the crew members who are used to texting from their mobile phones while on shore.
The FX 500 can act as a WAN connection to any onboard computer network (LAN) by simply connecting the unit to the onboard LAN and making all the devices attached to the LAN accessible to the Internet. The MAC Filtering feature provides a strong security option by providing access rights only to selected devices based on their MAC addresses. A Firewall option complements the security options by not only blocking unauthorized remote access but also blocks unwanted data traffic thus saving unwanted air-time costs.
The Network Management feature supporting Direct Mode (one-to-one), Shared Mode (multi-user) and a DMZ mode makes it powerful enough to configure the FX 500 with the attached devices in many different combinations of network configurations.
The FleetBroadband terminal has a continuous GPS output feature which allows GPS data to be sent out via the RS232 port in standard NMEA 0183 format. With the built-in GPS module, the FX 500 is able to provide accurate position information to onboard systems such as plotters and depth sounders, with a configurable baud-rate setting.
With the standard built-in Wi-Fi feature, the web-based user interface can be accessed via any web browser including Wi-Fi-enabled Smartphones such as BlackBerrys, iPhones, Android Phones, iPads, and PDAs via the FX 500’s secure Wi-Fi (WLAN). The Wi-Fi connection also offers a wireless Push-to-Talk (PTT) service to Smartphone users using free PTT applications such as Zello, without having to add any additional hardware to the terminal (unlike other PTT solutions that require expensive add-on hardware).
