Moby and Toremar Ferries

Case Study: Moby and Toremar Ferries

Moby is the leading ferry company in Italy for the transport of vehicles and passengers to outlying islands. With a fleet of 21 ships and about 14,000 annual departures. Every year Moby transports more than 5 million passengers to and from Sardinia, Corsica and Elba.

Moby and Toremar Ferries, the leading ferry company in Italy needed a way to provide quality and easy to use internet access to 2000+ passengers.

Challenge

Single 4G LTE does not offer adequate bandwidth for 2000+ passenger.

Offer reliable free WiFi to thousands of passengers throughout the entire cruise ship.

Gain passenger insights for targeted revenue-generating marketing.

Solutions

Pepwave MAX HD2 – to load balance between 2x 4G LTE connections.

Pepwave AP One In-Wall and AP One Flex 300M – to provide WiFi hotpot indoor and outdoor.

InControl2 cloud management – to centrally monitor and manage all device and to track the entire fleet.

Benefits

Seamless LTE connectivity in the Mediterranean and Caribbean sea.

Dedicated internet for guests.

Fast and strong WiFi throughout the vessel.

Insightful WiFi usage report.

“The Peplink and Know IT solution works flawlessly. We had no idea our plan to manage and load balance traffic could work this well. We care about customer satisfaction…and our customers are very satisfied !”

Giovanni Savarese

Chief Information Officer, Moby S.p.A.

“Nowadays the first thing a passenger asks while boarding is if there is WiFi. With Peplink APs we were able to meet and ensure a fast and reliable connection to all our customers.”

Luke Biancheria

Systeembeheerder, Toremar.

“InControl2 has been really useful in keeping everything under control. Simply monitoring data traffic and fleet location in real time means a world of difference to us as an operator.”

Francesco Savari

Systeembeheerder, Toremar.

“The intelligent captive portal gives us deep insights into our passengers and is extremely beneficial to our business strategy.”

Andrea Costanzo

Systeembeheerder, Moby S.p.A.

“We can’t thank Know IT enough for their technical expertise and Peplink for their flexible technology.”

Diego Savarese

Systeembeheerder, Moby S.p.A.

The Need for WiFi Internet at Sea

Transportation – whether land, sea or even air has been picking up speed in providing WiFi hotspot access for its passengers. Moby S.p.A, the leading Italian passenger shipping company serving the stunning trio of islands – Elba, Sardinia and Corsica – is no different. They needed to find a way to load balance between multiple LTE connections, provide quality and easy to use internet access to 2000 passengers (per vessel), and collect user insight all from a simple interface.

From problem to Peplink

During the 2014 Sicurezza event, Peplink Partner Know IT Srl proposed a solution to Moby. The plan was to deploy a single Pepwave MAX HD2 to load-balance multiple LTE connections and then to install Pepwave AP One In-Wall and AP One Flex 300M access points to cover both indoor and outdoor areas of the vessel with a custom-made external captive portal. All devices would then be registered to InControl2 for easy cloud management as well as real-time fleet tracking.

Secure Software-Defined VPN between the Ferries and the HQ

The second phase of the project will involve WAN Virtualization, forming a secure VPN network between the ferries and HQ using a high availability pairing of Peplink Balance 710 to consolidate the network infrastructure for streamlined remote management.

Know Your Passengers – Italy’s First Smart Ferry

Everything proceeded as planned. Because of Peplink’s intelligent load balancing, Moby could fine-tune how traffic is distributed across the multiple LTE connections. AP One In-Wall provided a form-factor suitable for the interiors of the vessels and provided Power over Ethernet (PoE) where equipment such as security cameras could draw power from. Passengers now enjoy reliable WiFi Internet and can gain access to the Internet through a multilingual and easy to use captive portal. Moby is able to gain passenger insights such as demographics or even their physical on the vessel. The result is the introduction of Marmorica – Italy’s first “smart ferry”. The first of its kind to provide free, quality WiFi to passengers together with fleet-tracking and user insight on the back-end.

The first phase of the project saw the solution roll out to 4 fast cruise ferries, 1 cruise ferry and 3 small ferries belonging to Moby S.p.A themselves. Toremar, Moby’s subsidiary, saw the same deployment to 6 of its ferries, including the aforementioned Marmorica smart ferry.

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