Integrating data to create web services built on operations-critical connectivity, marine electronics specialist Vikmar adds an array of offerings—ranging from navigation, communication and fish finding to information and entertainment.
It took Vikmar a couple of decades to build a solid foundation of marine electronics and related services, pioneering affordable internet and telephony at sea based on satellite connectivity and live data streams.
Today, with the maturing of modern technologies to allow for both manual and AI-assisted programming, a new level of data utilization is emerging to enhance online services at sea.
“These are fascinating times to say the least,” Vikmar managing owner Jan Hammer Egholm noted on the rollout of new services this year (2026). “We’ve been intensely engaged in developing new products and solutions for our clients at sea, and some of that first became feasible with the arrival of new satellite internet connectivity systems that we began to offer in earnest a few years ago. So we were urgently looking to streamline services enabled by improved connectivity, which we did last year with the Viknet Connect service portal. But this work continues and times move quickly so we decided to develop a range of data driven web services, to add new services and to organize and optimize already existing data streams for our clients to make good use of.”
Among the new services coming along is a radar software that makes it easy and convenient at sea to view radar data on all sorts of displays and devices, whether on the command bridge or elsewhere on board the vessel.
“The new radar service offers various add-on sources to integrate with the vessel’s own radar signals. It can be, for example, shared radar data from other vessels, or it can be some map data of relevance, or live feeds showing wind speed, temperatures, currents, waves and so on, plus water depths, for example. This can be relevant, for instance, in search and rescue situations but also in other connections.”
Another new service is ‘Kíkur,’ a buoy management system that maps all buoys deployed in Faroese waters at any given point, making life easier for longliners, gillnetters and other vessels.
“This service is really a way for longliners and other fishing vessels to skip the traditional transmitter placed on each buoy, which costs between 4,000 and 5,000 DKK [535 to 670 EUR] a piece. Instead of using a transmitter, they can now enter the position of each buoy as they deploy it and the data gets shared with other vessels as well, helping to prevent mixups and confusion over who is operating where or which buoy is whose.”
‘Endless possibilities’
Meanwhile Vikmar is creating new live databases on water temperatures, weather, currents, water depths and more, to upgrade existing ones.
“These are data critical for fishing and other maritime operations as well as for some areas of research,” Mr. Egholm said. “The new services make more effective use of cross referencing data in real time. Also we’re now tagging the data points to indicate the level of quality—after all, some data isn’t being as frequently updated as other, or has a different category of source. This makes it easier to distinguish between more accurate and less accurate data.”
Also in for an upgrade is the Vessel Tracker System used over a number of year.
“We’re upgrading the VTS to not just include marine traffic but even aviation,” Mr. Egholm added. “This is in accordance with international standards and we’re also integrating various zones not previously covered.”
The progress of recent years in satellite internet connectivity has proven to be a game changer.
“The level of connectivity at sea has in fact caught up with our level on land. So this is in fact a revolution when it comes to marine electronics and associated services—all the equipment and services used by vessels to access information, communicate, navigate and find fish. This has happened over a few years, and yet it seems it’s only beginning to dawn on people what the implications are in terms of services becoming available. We’ve made it part of our mission to stay at the forefront of this and so we’re developing new services based on the existence of great connectivity at sea. The possibilities are endless.”
Back in the day, what originally set Vikmar apart from its competition was the company’s ability to combine TV and internet satellite connections. It subsequently added increasingly advanced media packages for those working at sea, before taking it all to the next level with the latest satellite connectivity systems integrated with new technologies to handle live data streams—and offer new services.
