Connecting a Drillship to Her Headquarter Using LTE

Offshore ultra-Deepwater drilling company, Pacific Drilling, is one of the youngest and most technologically advanced fleets in the industry. They are committed to delivering the safest, most efficient, most reliable Deepwater drilling performance.

Challenge

In order to maintain connectivity, Pacific Drilling requires a recommendation of the best solution for a drillship that needs to access the company (NYSE:PACD) Enterprise Network, with the need for high data usage across cellular (roughly 1TB/mth). Also, to ensure that the solution will offer low latency performance to enable all their applications (VOIP, Visio conferencing, remote maintenance and data historian) and advanced cybersecurity policies.

Solution

TECHfirm Canarias team recommended an LTEA cellular solution comprising of Pepwave MAX HD4, and two extra MAX BR1s IP67 to maximize the signal reception from the shore and to reduce cable run. Meanwhile, a FusionHub virtual impliance has been setup within the customer data center. Additionally, 6 x Multi-IMSI capable SIM cards were also delivered to ensure a maximum of flexibility (600+ networks available). 

Result

Pacific Drilling is now able to use the service in Las Palmas and in the Gulf of Mexico with first-class performances matching perfectly with their fleet digitalization ambitions.

  • Bandwidth aggregation between  6 SIM cards (running on four different local providers)
  • latency management to exclude from the SD-WAN a connection which latency is higher than 150ms
  • use of 256-bit AES encryption VPN to match advanced Cybersecurity policies

Deployment

Pepwave MAX HD4. Quad 4G LTE Mobile Router.
MAX HD4

(Before upgrade)

  • allow bandwidth bonding
  • latency management
Pepwave MAX HD4 MBX. Quad Cellular Gigabit LTE Mobile Router.
MAX HD4 MBX

(After upgrade)

  • first-class performances matching perfectly with their fleet digitalization ambitions.
Pepwave MAX HD4 IP67. Quad 4G LTE Mobile Router.

MAX BR1 IP67
  • maximize the signal reception from the shore
  • reduce cable run
Peplink FusionHub Virtual Appliance. Extend SpeedFusion to Your Cloud.
FusionHub
  • SpeedFusion end-point at the data center