Blog 7: Internet at sea/ offshore internet

9. August 2021

With the ease with which we achieve lightning-fast Internet connections on the mainland, as a technician I sometimes forget what luxury we have in terms of 4G and 5G coverage. There are almost always multiple transmission towers available and abroad, due to roaming, multiple operators as well. On (the North) Sea, that becomes a little different, both easier and more difficult.

Why does it get easier?

• There are far fewer obstacles at sea that can interfere with the signal, for a windmill (farm) or drilling platform because of this it is relatively easy to set up a connection to a transmitter mast, a distance of 20 kilometers can be easily bridged.

Why does it get harder?

• There are not that many transmission towers at sea, mostly we use the ones that are on the coast. The benefit is that with the growth of offshore wind farms, more transmission towers are also placed at these wind farms.

• With moving objects such as ships, we cannot work with directional antennas, and fall back on omni antennas, these are less reception sensitive, in addition, ships do not protrude as far above the water as a drilling platform, both of these points mean that we can cover less distance to a transmitter mast.
• At sea, low frequencies are usually used to transmit 4G and 5G. This is done to be able to beam over a larger area, a logical choice if there are not many deployment points available. The disadvantage is that internet speed is lower at these frequencies.

If more Internet speed is needed than what a single connection can deliver or if the signal needs to be distributed across multiple transmission towers, then we start stacking connections. How that works I'll tell you in a future blog.

In short, offshore Internet is well within the first 20 kilometers of the coast, and the installation of additional transmission towers will only make it better.