Customer Success Story:

Reliable connectivity means smooth sailing for Dutch Pilots’ Corporation

The Challenges

The Dutch Pilots’ Corporation (Nederlands Loodswezen) guides 100,000 ships into North Sea harbors every year. Deep-draught vessels bound for Rotterdam must negotiate channels within a tolerance of five meters or less in some of the world’s harshest weather conditions. Positioning updates frequently took longer than the required three seconds for navigational precision, even with a supplementary land-based system. While on-board modems attempted to find signals or switch between networks, software applications would often freeze, requiring pilots to reboot, resulting in a complete loss of navigational information. Connectivity issues compromised safety and scheduling efficiency throughout the Netherland’s busy harbors, rivers and locks.

The Solution

After evaluating several options, the corporation decided to deploy NetMotion on more than 700 laptops across all of the ports and regions served by Loodswezen. This immediately eliminated application freezes in computers that had regularly experienced crashes due to signal quality issues. Also eliminated were the multiple reboots that had wasted time and put the ships in potentially dangerous situations. Connections that often dropped when switching between GPRS, 3G and 4G networks now maintained reliable connectivity and the average time between updates dropped to less than two seconds, giving pilots greater confidence in the precision of their navigation systems.

NetMotion is the missing piece in our connectivity puzzle.”
Wim van Buuren, Chairman of the Dutch Harbor Pilots
Region Rotterdam-Rihnmond

After the testing, our pilots didn’t want NetMotion to be removed from their device.”
Sand van der Vlies, Regional System Administrator
Loodswezen

The Results

NetMotion delivers reliable connections so pilots can focus on safely guiding shipping traffic instead of troubleshooting computer technology. Loodswezen credits NetMotion with providing quicker, safer flow on the rivers and reducing wait time in Dutch and Flemish harbors.

Elimination of hardware crashes during network transitions
Zero application freezes across all ports and regions
Average time between updates reduced to below two seconds, ensuring navigational precision
Local position corrections now take less than the required three seconds
In side-by-side testing NetMotion required 30 percent less bandwidth than the previous solution

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