

- V8V2222
-
HF/SSB radio
email and voice services
BBR
HF/SSB Email
Email
with file attachments
for remote subscribers
-
on land and sea.
BRUNEI
BAY
RADIO
has established
a HF radio e-mail service for a variety of users who require
reliable email from isolated locations in
SE Asia, NW Pacific and Indian Oceans.
BBRemail
was
developed in response to needs highlighted at the regional
Marine Tourism Symposium in Kuala Lumpur in 2005 and to
address the requirements of cruising yacht families with
children enrolled in correspondence education.
BBRemail
also facilitates the poverty alleviation goals
of the BIMP-EAGA Business Council's October 2008 conference
on Community-based Ecotourism by providing cheap, reliable
email for isolated communities, sustainable environment
projects and remote SMEs.
BBRemail
is our specially developed
version of the popular and proven SailMail system for
cruising yachts that we have operated from here in Brunei
since 2001. It has the same great system
reliability, data compression and transfer speed, but
allows higher daily connection time, and attachments such as
word, excel, jpg, pdf and OpenOffice.
It has been developed specifically for this
region to address the need for low-cost but dependable email requirements
for:
-
Small commercial vessels
-
Cruising families - especially for correspondence courses
-
Remote jungle eco-resorts
-
Live-aboard dive, surf and charter
vessels
-
Island resorts
and dive centres
-
Conservation & rehabilitation sites and projects
-
Environmental protection monitoring
-
Community based ecotourism programmes
-
Distance education - for communities and individuals
Our
BBRemail service offers
varied daily
data traffic allowances ( 20, 30 or 40 mins per day) to suit
subscriber requirements, and transfer of attachments, such as
Word, Excel, pdf, jpg, OpenOffice etc.
It is
especially useful for:
Cruising
yachts or motor-yachts with greater email requirements, such as
those with adults or children studying via correspondence
courses, and people who need to maintain
business contact, or manage investments - eg: real
estate - while cruising.
BBRemail
gives these cruisers
the opportunity to also enjoy the quiet anchorages, jungle
rivers, wildlife venues, pristine beaches and remote islands of this region;
rather than “cruise” from one Wi-Fi equipped marina or
town internet facility to the next.
Extending the cruising budget
by cruising away from marinas and town anchorages to the
less congested bays and islands. There are plenty of
opportunities for immersion in the greater complexity of
commercialised life in many parts of SE Asia. But keeping
away from these areas helps manage the budget. Rowing ashore
to buy fresh food from local communities, fishing and meals
on-board are some of the cost-saving benefits that come with
cruising away from marinas, towns etc.
BBRemail
provides the additional email
capability to maintain contact with family and friends,
order parts at the next town, arrange for visitors and shore
travel, send the magazine article, or post pictures and
reports to a website.
Maintaining an involved lifestyle
while cruising. As baby-boomer sailors retire, many seek to
continue to explore, learn, meet new people and in some
cases, contribute to the communities and habitats they
encounter. SE Asian provides multiple opportunities to
continue an active, stimulating and worthwhile lifestyle; on
a retirement budget.
BBRemail
helps make that
possible by providing cheap, reliable, email communication
while living for extended periods in low-cost anchorages,
islands, coastal bays etc.
Small businesses in isolated locations,
where the
convenience and truly low cost of
BBRemail
greatly improves business
efficiency, operational safety for staff and
clients, and opens new markets and ways of doing business
that previously seemed impossible. This is especially true
for isolated community-based ecotourism facilities, where email
provides contact with international agents for bookings, and
streamlines ordering supplies, managing guest arrivals etc.
Communities that see the
opportunity to establish ecotourism to provide income to
replace overfishing, wildlife poaching or other
unsustainable practices. The BIMP-EAGA Business
Council conference (October '08 in Manado - Sulawesi) on
poverty alleviation through community-based ecotourism,
highlighted the benefits - for local people, visitors,
wildlife, cultural heritage and global environmental issues
- that accrue when communities gain financial benefit from
tourism by preserving and protecting the environment that
sustains them.
BBRemail
gives isolated
communities the communication capability to link with
clients, agents, suppliers, educators, environmental
consultants, financial aid and conservation volunteers.
Small commercial vessels
that lack the financial capability to operate expensive
satellite communications to receive important weather and
safety related information. Some vessels required to fit
GMDSS satellite equipment for registration purposes do not
have the operating income to pay for its services.
BBRemail
provides an alternative at a
feasible price; for safe management of the vessel and crew.
Tourism and recreation oriented
vessels that need the efficiency benefits of
email to manage their operations. This includes live-aboard
dive and surf charter boats, charter yachts etc. These
vessels may be too small to require GMDSS equipment for
registration, but they nevertheless will benefit from
weather information and the cost-savings of quick
communication with their shore office, agents or direct
booking clients, plus advance ordering of food and other
supplies, and managing guest arrivals/departures.
BBRemail
provides that
capability at a realistic price.
Distance education for
commercial vessel crews, cruising yachts and remote
communities. A wide range of school, vocational and academic
courses leading to recognised certificates, diplomas and
degrees are available via correspondence learning
techniques. Health sciences, tourism, technical, social
science and computing courses are available.
BBRemail
provides the
capability to give access to these forms of modern education
at a realistic price. Once the equipment -
radio/modem/antenna - are setup, multiple subscribers with
separate notebooks can plug on to send/receive their course
materials and assignments.
Sustainable environment organisations,
including not-for-profit groups such as The Nature
Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund and The Orangutan
Foundation. SE Asia is home to the largest area of coral in
the world - now designated as The Coral Triangle - and
numerous unique species, such as the Orangutan.
BBRemail
provides a low-cost,
portable, and field durable email service that can be
powered by solar panels, operated from a car battery, and
shared by numerous users.
Operational aspects of
BBRemail:
Our base equipment here in Brunei (which includes multiple
radios for multiple simultaneous connections), already
provides existing SailMail users – using the relatively
inefficient antennas and power supplies on most cruising
yachts - with an effective HF radio e-mail service from The
Solomons/Papua New Guinea through to the Maldives, and Japan
to the southern Indian Ocean. With the better antennas,
power supply etc on larger vessels or land
based installations, subscribers to this service can expect faster
connection times and more thorough coverage.
The same design
philosophy that underlies the SailMail software and system
integration is utilised in this service. This is to create
an extremely reliable and stable service that minimises
connection time so multiple users can share the same radio
frequencies and base radio equipment etc, in order to
minimise set-up costs and management time. (The designers
and programmers want to go sailing rather than sit
managing the system.)
This efficient and
minimal resources approach is the opposite to many
commercial remote area e-mail systems. Instead, these
services aim to maximise profits through relatively
unsophisticated message handling, minimal development time
on smart operation, and extended connection times for users.
For example, if a connection is lost with a "low-cost"
satellite system (eg: Iridium or the SE Asian Aces service) , the same message must be re-sent from the
start; at considerable expense. With the BBR HF/SSB e-mail service, the system
remembers where the previous connection reached in
transferring the message, and starts from there when a new
connection is established.
Subscription
levels for
BBRemail:
Level |
Time |
Price |
Description |
Email Only |
15 min per day
(approx) |
Bn$500 |
Weather/Safety
attachments only eg:GRIB Files |
Level 1 |
20 min per day
(approx) |
Bn$600 |
File attachments
(eg:jpg,doc,exl,pdf,etc) permitted |
Level 2 |
30 min per day
(approx) |
Bn$900 |
file attachments (eg: jpg, doc, exl, pdf etc) permitted |
Level 3 |
40 min per day
(approx) |
Bn$1200 |
file attachments (eg: jpg, doc, exl, pdf etc) permitted |
Connection time is averaged over a month, so it's possible
to be over time on some days and this is balanced by quiet
days.
Levels 1 to 3 also permit additional daily/monthly
connection time above the averaged limits, for Bn$0.25 per
minute connection time. This suits sudden short term
business demands.
An initial setup and one-time software licence of Bn$200 also applies for each
subscriber/e-mail account.
Additional services included with
BBRemail:
FREE access to official METAREA or coastal forecasts.
Select from a large catalogue of forecasts in the radio
e-mail software. The software automatically formats the
request e-mail to the shore PC which harvests the
information from the internet and e-mails it back. (Brunei
Bay Radio instigated the establishment of a website that
contains the official METAREA forecasts – the same forecasts
available to commercial shipping via INMARSAT satellite
system at substantial cost.)
FREE access to GRIB weather charts
with wind speed and direction indicators, and predictions to
5 days ahead. These charts are created from the same
database (the USA’s NOAA system) used by the US Navy and
many commercial weather chart and weather prediction
services. GRIB weather charts are far more useful than
normal weather fax (especially in low latitudes where
isobars are broadly spaced) because they include wind
direction and wind speed information.
The HF radio e-mail software has a
graphic display to draw the required area of GRIB chart, and
automatically creates the detailed request e-mail to send to
the shore PC to create the chart data (using the latest
weather information updated by the NOAA each 6 hours) and
e-mail it back for display using the free weather fax/GRIB
file software that is available with a
BBR HF/SSB E-mail
subscription.
FREE harvesting of any web page.
Send the appropriately formatted request e-mail to the shore
PC which collects the page/s, strips out the graphics, and
e-mails it back.
FREE HF radio propagation software
integrated with the on-board radio e-mail software. This
helps subscribers choose the optimum frequency to use for
their connection with Brunei Bay Radio. Frequency selection
is based upon time of day, distance from our base, and
present atmospheric propagation factors; principally the
result of sun spot activity. The Solar Flux Index (SFI) – a
measure of sun spot activity - is automatically updated in
the on-board software each time the remote user connects to
BBR, so the integrated propagation software’s prediction is
as accurate as possible.
Back to top
Call-sign:
V8V2222 SelCall ID: 2222
Email Us: mail (at) bruneibay.net
Please let us know your contact details, shore email and Country of Registration
BRUNEI
BAY
RADIO

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