MPA recently clinched the Intelligent20 Award 2002/03.

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Given Singapore’s extensive shipping network and the heavy traffic in its port, shipping personnel increasingly require real-time and up-to-date vessel information. This information enables them to perform their day-to-day operations efficiently in order to provide prompt and reliable service to the ships. As these shipping personnel are always on the move, the ability to access vessel details through wireless means is an added advantage to their operations.

MPA launched two new services to enable subscribers of MARINET, its e-commerce system, to gain access to critical information with ease. (For more details on MARINET, see this story in Challenge September 2002 issue.)

Vessel Movement Alerts
Using this service is easy. MARINET customers just have to indicate the names of their vessels and the nature of events that are of interest to them. They can choose to receive an update on a vessel’s estimated time of arrival. They can also request to be alerted when the vessel arrives, when it berths, as well as when it departs Singapore.

Customers can also choose to be alerted through their memo pagers or handphones via the Short Message Service (SMS).

Vessel Mobile
With this service, MARINET customers can easily get information on a specific vessel. They only have to send an SMS message containing the vessel’s full name to MPA’s computer system. Within 20 seconds, they will receive a message with the latest information on the vessel. For example, if the vessel is arriving in the Singapore port soon, the users will receive an SMS message informing them of its expected time of arrival.

Services gain popularity
Since the introduction of the mobile services in July 2002, MPA sends out an average of 30,000 messages per month.

MARINET user David Lew is one happy customer. He said, “In the past, I had to make many calls to the Telephone Vessel Enquiry Service to get information. The new services have dispensed with the need to call. Now the information reaches me automatically.”

More e-services
Twenty-four e-services were also recently launched, bringing the total number of online services now available to the maritime community to 32. Of the 32 e-services offered, 30 are transactional in nature. This means that users can complete the entire transaction online. There are plans to develop more e-services in MARINET in future.