Mobile satellite company, Inmarsat, has launched a new chat application for fishermen on board Chinese coastal fishing vessels to keep in close contact with colleagues and family.
The application, called Fish Chat, has been developed exclusively for Inmarsat’s Fleet One Service by Beijing Marine Communication and Navigation, Inmarsat’s largest distributor in China.
Cao Desheng, president of MCN Beijing, said: “We have been doing extensive research and evaluation in recent months on how Fleet One could be optimised for use by coastal fisheries. In the past, this market has been perceived as being on the low end for data communications and extremely price sensitive – to counter this and make it more appealing to the target customer, we designed a tailor-made and user-friendly application.”
He pointed out that as a result of the development of the app, MCN Beijing discovered a significant gap in the market because existing smartphone chat apps had difficulty with controlling background data volume.
Inmarsat said that the Fish Chat app works through its Fleet One service, which is tailored to deliver dependable voice and broadband data to near-shore fishing boats and leisure yachts.
Fleet One has been available to operators globally since August.
