Satcom at Sea: Competition, the Cloud and the Connected Ship

June 3, 2025

From crew connectivity to autonomous maritime systems, today’s fleets are hungry for bandwidth. The rapid growth of maritime satellite communication represents a sea change for an industry that has gone from kilobits to gigabits in just a few decades, with little sign of slowing.

The number of connected ships is growing at a rapid rate, with promising implications for the maritime satellite communications market. In 2023, the number of VSAT-connected ships stood at just 40,600. According to the latest analysis by Novaspace, that number soared to 105,000 in 2024—including previously unaddressed small vessels—and is expected to continue, growing 2.3 times to reach 244,000 over the next decade.

“The most impactful change is towards the digitalization of the maritime sector, of which increased automation is a growing component,” said Marlink President of Maritime Tore Morten Olsen. “The need for greater fuel efficiency and optimization of voyage performance has seen vessel operators and ship managers increasingly demand data and insights that can support better vessel performance.”

As the industry evolves, so too do satellite operators and service providers. In the case of Marlink, the focus is on managed services for connectivity, network design and management, as well as digital solutions like cybersecurity and cloud services.

Starlink Makes Landfall

The accelerated trend toward digitalization follows one of the most consequential market changes in the maritime domain: the introduction of Starlink and its abundant, easily accessible, relatively inexpensive direct-to-consumer satellite internet service. By the end of 2024, Starlink had connected 75,000 vessels, roughly two-thirds of which were small ships (less than 24 meters or sub-yacht size).

“[These] were not even considered as addressable by any satcom solution in the past because these markets are extremely price-sensitive,” said Jean-Baptiste Thépaut, a principal at Novaspace and contributor to the 13th edition of Novaspace’s “Prospects for Maritime Satellite Communications” market intelligence report. “Starlink has really expanded the market in this sense.”

With access to high-speed connectivity and generous data plans, it has become common for crews to tear through 1 TB of data in a matter of days. As with the mobile industry, the more data is available, the more it will be used. However, following its rapid expansion into the maritime sector, some Starlink users are feeling stranded.

As of mid-May, Starlink phased out unlimited data plans, moving to data caps and tiered pricing for maritime. Once users exhaust priority data, they will have the option to buy more or see speeds throttled to 1 Mbps.

“With 75,000+ vessels now dependent on Starlink, the industry stands at a precarious inflection point: adapt or risk crippling costs,” wrote Edwin Lamper, executive editor and head of business relations for Riviera, a maritime industry intelligence firm. “Overnight, the industry must transition from abundance to constraint.”

The pricing change could create more opportunities for other NGSO operators to compete, like OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon Kuiper. It could also expose underlying demand for committed information rates (CIR), fueling new services or a flight to providers that offer CIR.

“What we can say for sure is that the market is not really satisfied by the current Starlink monopoly in the maritime sector, and is actively looking for alternate solutions,” Thépaut said. “We expect a pure GEO solution will more and more take a secondary role. But we see a greater future for multi-orbit solutions combining GEO and LEO.”