Spanish shipping company Empresa Naviera Petrolera Atlantica (ENPASA) has fitted two of its tankers with NexusWave, the managed connectivity system from Viasat-owned Inmarsat Maritime, and reported measurable operational gains on both vessels.

The company recorded improvements in connectivity and in the time taken to update electronic charts after the installation. Crews on the two tankers now have access to unlimited data, a welfare benefit Inmarsat Maritime emphasised alongside the operational results.

ENPASA technical manager Sergio Iglesias framed the business case in direct terms. Reliable connectivity is now a "critical enabler of safe, efficient and modern vessel operation", he said.

What does the deployment change for ENPASA?

Three things, according to the operator and vendor. The tankers can access what Inmarsat Maritime called "high-performance communications across entire voyages". Electronic chart updates, a regulatory and safety workload item for any tanker operator, now take less time. And crew members get uncapped data, an increasing retention consideration in a sector where seafarers spend months at sea.

Inmarsat Maritime argued the results reflect a wider shift. Digital technologies, it said, are now fundamental to operating ships, with requirements spanning real-time data and cloud services.

The vendor claim and the operator result sit close together here. The connectivity and chart-update improvements come from ENPASA itself; the "entire voyages" framing is Inmarsat Maritime's marketing language. The deployment figure is small — two tankers — and the company has not disclosed contract value, throughput figures or rollout plans for the rest of its fleet.

Deployment speed mattered as much as the technology

Iglesias credited Inmarsat Maritime's local partner, which handled the installation, for the "speed of implementation". That detail echoes a consistent theme in maritime connectivity: the installation path, not just the service, determines whether ship operators adopt digital systems at all.

Jose Arias, global account manager at Inmarsat Maritime, positioned the ENPASA project as evidence of broader demand. The job, he said, is a "practical example" of how the company is meeting the "evolving needs of a modern maritime operator".

Maritime connectivity pressure keeps building

The deployment is a further data point in a sector under steady digitisation pressure. Shipping operators face growing requirements for real-time data, cloud-based services and continuous connectivity at sea — requirements that traditional maritime satcom struggled to meet at acceptable cost and speed.

Viasat acquired Inmarsat in 2023, combining Inmarsat's maritime and aviation satellite customer base with Viasat's Ka-band capacity. NexusWave is one of the products aimed at converting that combined fleet and spectrum position into managed connectivity offerings for commercial shipping.

For ENPASA, the immediate question is whether the two-tanker deployment extends across its fleet. Neither the operator nor Inmarsat Maritime has announced a timeline for further installations.