Preface of the 'Symposium on Workshop on Maritime Communications'

摘要

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is improving quickly, but people at ocean do not have access to the same telecommunications infrastructure people ashore have. Like people at land, mariners need to access international shore telephone and data public switched networks. Additionally they need to access many maritime specific communications, for example, mariners need to be able to communicate with other ships of any size or nationality, to receive and send urgent maritime safety information, and to send or receive distress alerts in an emergency to or from rescue coordination centers ashore and nearby ships anywhere in the world. Maritime telecommunications systems must be internationally interoperable. Bringing new ICT to mariners can be difficult, since to be interoperable, the technology must be affordable, acceptable and available to most ships and maritime countries.