Speedcast has signed a multi-year contract with Bristow Group to provide technology upgrades and future proof over 40 remote sites worldwide.

Site locations include Australia, Europe, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and North and South America.

Bristow Group is based in Houston and is a global leader in innovative and sustainable vertical flight offerings, providing aviation and search and rescue solutions to government and civil organisations, with 222 aircraft in its fleet around the world.

The agreement will see over 40 onshore energy and search and rescue office bases receive technology and system improvements through Speecast's Unified Global Platform (UGP) and its advanced, software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) offering.

Further, all sites will have the benefit of upgraded equipment.

Speedcast's SD-WAN seamlessly integrates very small aperture terminal (VSAT), LEO and MEO offerings, cellular 4G and 5G, wireless and MPLS technologies into a single purpose-built and secure WAN path that provides consistent high-quality uptime.

Speedcast's SD-WAN is a completely multi-path, multi-orbit connectivity offering, meaning that it garners flexible, intelligent and secure network management and ensures applications have the highest availability and performance.

This contract comes after a decade-long connectivity partnership between Speedcast and Bristow Group, with the communications and IT services provider offering round-the-clock secure network support for Bristow's operations, managing its WAN, LAN, voice and backup broadband services.

Speedcast's offering supports flight operations by managing a critical lifeline, allowing aircraft to operate safely and efficiently, and affords Bristow personnel the ability to access crucial enterprise systems and applications, including aircraft maintenance data transfer.

“At Bristow, our mission is to make every flight personal and assure safe, efficient and reliable solutions to deliver superior outcomes to our stakeholders,” Bristow chief information officer Noel Malcaba says.

“Speedcast has been our long-standing connectivity partner serving our fleet operations base stations across the globe.

“Because of the reliable service and advanced technology Speedcast delivers, our team can conduct their work and ensure flights continue to run seamlessly and stay connected, no matter the flight path or destination.

Speedcast provides its communications services to the maritime, energy, mining, media, telecom, cruise, NGO, government and enterprise sectors.

The company relies on its global network platform to provide completely connected systems that use technologies and applications to their full benefit to transform what remote operations can achieve.

In addition, Speedcast affords its customers faster, seamless pole-to-pole coverage from a global hybrid satellite, fibre, cellular, microwave, MPLS, and IP transport network with direct access to public cloud platforms.

“As part of this agreement, Speedcast will be conducting technology enhancements and equipment upgrades at many critical base locations, ensuring Bristow benefits from the latest advancements in hybrid connectivity,” Speedcast energy executive vice president Richard Elson says.

“By future-proofing their network leveraging Speedcast's Unified Global Platform, we're confident Bristow will experience the highest quality connection and redundancy, keeping their operations running smoothly.

“We look forward to continuing to meet Bristow's requirements for safe and efficient operations.