GTMaritime offers customisable news service to support crew welfare

GTNews4Crew provides shipowners a highly-configurable environment for curating news relevant to their crews and distributing it efficiently to vessels

26 May 2020 – At a time when access to news from reputable sources is more important than ever, GTMaritime is introducing a fully-customisable news distribution service for vessel owners and operators helping them keep their crews up-to-date on events unfolding in their home countries as well as offering a selection of lighter content to help maintain morale.

Specifically designed for the marine environment, GTNews4Crew can be configured according to the nationalities and interests of a vessel’s crew. News channels can be selected based on language preferences to ensure articles delivered to vessels are both relevant and relatable. News is available in 20 languages, including those of the major seafarer nations, such as Indian, Filipino, and Russian.

Mike McNally, Global Commercial Director at GTMaritime explains: “A multilingual, locally-sourced solution was essential to avoid ‘foreign hotel TV’ syndrome, where you end up watching domestic broadcasts in the typically futile hope something from home will crop up and, if it does, then trying to piece the story together from any captions, footage, or listening beneath over-dubs. It invariably leaves you none the wiser.”

Another priority was accessibility. Today, most seafarers bring their own devices aboard to keep themselves entertained when off-duty. Once news articles have been downloaded to the onboard GTNews4Crew server, they can be viewed from personal laptops, tablets, smartphones by pointing them to the ship’s internal network.

Mike continues: “This allows crew to catch-up on happenings at home or the progress of their favourite sports team anytime and anywhere, whether as a talking point with their colleagues over a meal, or at the end of the day from the privacy of their cabin.”

Furthermore, because the news content is hosted locally, crew are not faced with the dilemma of whether or not to use their calling cards or allocated internet quota to keep abreast of rapidly developing events in their home countries, such as the Covid-19 outbreak. This means they are less likely to be worried by rumours or misinformation spread over social media.

GTNews4Crew is easy to deploy, with ready-made packages and scripts for all major computer operating systems and versions. Once up and running, content options can be managed on a vessel-by-vessel or fleetwide basis via a simple-to-use dashboard.

For ships with limited connectivity, GTNews4Crew also features granular control over how much and how often fresh news content is distributed in order to keep download sizes manageable. In the case of severe bandwidth constraints, the delivery of any images accompanying articles can be switched off.

Mike adds: “By default GTNews4Crew compresses each package of news before it is sent out and you would be surprised at how much can be squeezed into a few megabytes. But we understand broadband availability still varies significantly from fleet to fleet and from ship to ship.”

A basic version of GTNews4Crew will be provided as standard to all GTMail4Crew subscription customers. GTMaritime are also providing all customers with a trial of the basic version of GTNews4Crew for an initial 2-month period after which they can upgrade to the full version, continue enjoying the basic version by subscribing to GTMail4Crew, or end their trial.

 

About GTMaritime:

GTMaritime
Wherever you are, we are.

• Over 20 years maritime communications experience
• 5,500+ vessels & 500+ businesses worldwide trust GTMaritime with their communication solutions
• Proven 100% service record with no unscheduled downtime
• 100% malware blocking with over 86,000 malware attacks stopped in the last 12 months
• Over 5.3m spam messages and 1.7m known viruses blocked in the last 12 months
• 24-7-365 technical support from ITIL trained engineers
• Offices in the UK, USA and Singapore along with a global partner network
• Continuous software development ensures rapid deployment of new functionality, as well providing software updates for vulnerabilities

Since 1998 GTMaritime has been providing a range of technology solutions and services to the maritime industry that serve to enable effective communications over satellite.

We specialise in providing solutions and services that help ensure vessel compliance and business operability 365 days a year, as well as keeping crew in touch with friends and family whilst at sea. All of this is backed up by a market leading infrastructure and unrivalled 24-hour customer support, every day of the year.

Our development team deliver continuous development and enhancement features to ensure our products stay ahead of the ever-growing cyber threats, with silent system enhancements deployed on a weekly basis.

We provide these services from three offices – our head office in the UK and local offices in the USA and Singapore – and increasingly through an established and growing network of resellers and partners around the world.

 

For further information:

Alexandra Collins​
Marketing Manager, GTMaritime
+44 (0) 1925 818918
Alexandra.Collins@GTMaritime.com
www.GTMaritime.com

Debbi Bonner
Managing Director, JLA Media
+31 (0)6 5263 0122
debbi.bonner@j-l-a.com
www.j-l-a.com