Smart gains majority control of Dublin-based Blue Ocean Wireless

MANILA, Philippines – Smart Communications Inc., the wholly-owned mobile subsidiary of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), is investing an additional $6.26 million in Dublin-based Blue Ocean Wireless (BOW), increasing its equity ownership from 28.3 percent to a majority 51 percent.

Aside from Smart, Japan’s biggest mobile telecommunications company NTT DoCoMo – PLDT’s second biggest foreign shareholder next to First Pacific – and Altobridge Ltd. are investing a combined $1.24 million into BOW, bringing the total amount of new investments to $7.5 million.

The new investments are aimed to accelerate the rapid introduction of BOW’s new product FleetBroadband (FBB) and next generation maritime communication services.

“The proceeds from this investment further strengthen BOW’s balance sheet and underpin its strategy to aggressively enhance and grow its service offering within the merchant marine sector,” BOW chief executive officer Paul Wallace said.

“With the introduction of FBB, we have significantly enhanced our range of available services and we look forward to continuing to enhance our service offering and growing our global fleet of customers.”

BOW, a company providing mobile communication services for the merchant marine sector, has announced that its FBB service is now fully operational and commercially available to existing and potential BOW customers. The announcement came following the successful completion of full FBB testing.

BOW has established itself as the leading provider of GSM services to the merchant maritime sector. With a customer base and order book of over 650 vessels, BOW has demonstrated rapid growth since it was founded two years ago.

For the first time, BOW will provide FBB and mobile GSM connectivity at sea where no other network exists. This will allow officers and crew to make and receive voice calls, send and receive text message and emails, and access the Internet. FBB also supports the latest technologies for both conducting business remotely and effective fleet operation, including the ability to access corporate networks and facilities from anywhere around the globe.

The FBB service is supported by both Inmarsat’s FB250 and FB500 and the VSAT satellite terminal.

FBB is the first maritime communications service to provide cost-effective global broadband data and voice, simultaneously, through a compact antenna. It provides unprecedented connectivity between vessels and the shore, regardless of global position or conditions at sea.

BOW said it will continue to expand the range of value-added services, beyond the basic FBB services. These VAS provide users with cost and traffic control, firewall management, data optimization, high security options, easy VPN access, messaging service, and a full IP range.