Case Studies - Defence

Following the roll out of the WELCOME telephone service to all Royal Navy major warships, sailors afloat now enjoy the same facilities as Soldiers and Airmen. Phone calls can now be made from sea anywhere in the world to family, friends, banks and solicitors.

Key Benefits

• Calls allowed whenever operationally possible (uses ship's SHF MILSAT)
• Utilises existing ship's telephone exchanges and handsets (500 in Ark Royal)
• Free or cheap calls depending on tour of duty length

Background
With the increasing demands on the Royal Navy, personnel are being deployed away from home on a regular basis. Keeping in touch with family, friends and banks etc is an important morale booster but regular contact had been difficult as there were only 3 payphones on ships with up to 1200 crew.

Challenge
QinetiQ were approached by the Royal Navy to supply a scalable solution that would vastly increase the quantity of telephone lines to 1 line for each 50 ship's company members. The solution had to be implemented within tight operational deadlines, be minimally invasive and make maximum use of existing ship's infrastructure i.e. different maker's exchanges and handsets.

Moreover, in order to be operationally viable over the military satellite communications, the delivered system had to make highly efficient use of the available communications bandwidth.

Solution
QinetiQ designed and delivered a solution that could be integrated with existing telecommunications equipment without endangering operations communications.

By using the satellite communications more efficiently (bandwidth per channel reduced to 5Kbps from 16 Kbps), costs were reduced and the call capacity increased. The solution also had a very small installation footprint, short implementation timeframe and complied with MOD's INFOSEC and TEMPEST requirements.
Achieving a solution would not have been possible without QinetiQ's detailed knowledge of the Royal Navy's communications systems, both afloat and ashore.

Results
The solution was operationally trialled, in earnest, in HMS Ark Royal during Op TELIC and has subsequently been rolled out to all major warships. The programme has been so successful that it continues to evolve under the RN's Skynet 5 Maritime Baseband legacy interconnectivity programme.