Warranty, support and SLA: what to demand from a fishing fleet installer

When connectivity fails aboard a working boat, the problem is not inconvenience: it is that the VMS may have stopped transmitting, that the market does not know when the landing is due, and that nobody ashore knows where the vessel is.

And yet the first half hour is almost always consumed working out who to call. That indeterminacy is not accidental: a Starlink installation involves three distinct responsibilities overlapping, each with its own warranty, its own point of contact and its own timescale.

The three overlapping warranties

1. Hardware — from SpaceX

Covers manufacturing defects in the terminal and router. If the antenna stops working with no external cause, the claim goes to SpaceX.

It does not cover water damage from a badly sealed connector, corrosion from exposure the design did not anticipate, impact damage — frequent on a working deck — or electrical failure from a poorly protected supply.

A nuance we already covered in our article on who can install Starlink: this warranty is not voided because a third party did the fitting. But nor does it cover you if that third party did it badly.

2. Workmanship — from the integrator

This is the one most needed and least often requested. It covers the work: that the deck penetrations do not leak, that the mount withstands the vibration trip after trip, that the cable does not chafe, that the electrical connection is properly protected.

Item	What to demand
Term	12 months is the reasonable standard in marine electronics
Watertightness	Explicit cover for the penetrations made
Mounting integrity	Mount, fasteners and fixings, with vibration in mind
VMS continuity	That they answer for the VMS still transmitting after the work
Travel	Who bears it within the period
Exclusions	Enumerated, not implied

Scope matters more than term: 24 months without watertightness is worth less than 12 with it.

3. Service and coverage — depends on your plan

This is not a warranty, it is a contracted service. Starlink publishes no availability SLA with compensation for maritime plans. Coverage is what it is, and it is verifiable in advance on the official map.

Practical consequence: if the vessel fishes outside the coverage band, that is not a fault and nobody compensates it. It is a planning decision taken before signing. If your fleet works grounds south of 56°S, this affects you directly.

“24/7 support”: what it means on a working boat

It is the sector’s most repeated claim and it merits dismantling.

In the marine world, real 24/7 support is remote: a channel open at any hour to diagnose a configuration problem, guide a restart, check terminal status remotely and determine whether the incident is equipment, network or coverage.

That resolves most incidents and is genuinely useful. What it does not mean is that a technician is willing to come aboard in the small hours, or that if the boat is 300 miles out someone will reach it.

The questions that separate real support from the slogan

1. What is resolved remotely and what requires a visit? There should be a clear answer.
2. What is the committed response time? Distinguish response from resolution.
3. At which ports can you attend without a travel charge? Every integrator has a working radius.
4. Can you attend at a landing port away from base? Decisive for an offshore fleet.
5. How quickly do you attend an incident affecting the VMS? This should take priority over any other.
6. Is the support yours, or do you refer me to Starlink? Many incidents are installation matters, not product matters.

What to demand according to your type of fishing

Inshore and small-scale gear. A 12-month workmanship guarantee with watertightness, remote support in working hours and a service radius covering your home port. Sufficient.

Offshore. The priority changes. What matters is no longer the physical visit but the quality of remote diagnosis and how well the installation is documented. Ask for the handover record to include the cable route diagram: if intervention is needed on a trip, knowing where it runs makes the difference. And confirm whether the integrator can attend at your usual landing ports, not just at base.

Distant water. Here it is also worth carrying spares aboard — at least cable and connectors — and having the crew able to run a basic check. Nobody is going to reach you.

Fleet. With several vessels you have real negotiating power. It is worth agreeing response times, a single point of contact and uniform terms across the fleet in writing, rather than contracting boat by boat.

Why this matters more in fishing than in leisure

There are three concrete reasons:

The cost of downtime is quantifiable. A lost day has a number attached: the trip not made, the crew standing idle, the ice bought. That number is your argument in any negotiation over response times.

The VMS admits no interruptions. An outage in transmission is not a technical nuisance but a breach with enforcement consequences. Any support commitment should explicitly prioritise incidents affecting the VMS.

The insurer asks. In the event of a claim related to the equipment or to water ingress through the deck, the insurer will want to know who carried out the work and with which materials.

The documentation is the guarantee

This is the central point: a guarantee without documentation is a conversation, not a right.

If a leak appears at a deck penetration in eight months, what distinguishes an uncontested repair from an exchange of recriminations is having the photographs of how that penetration was executed before it was sealed.

The minimum you should keep, which we detail in what a professional installation includes:

• Photographs of every deck penetration before sealing
• A record of VMS status before and after, with date and time
• A dated baseline speed test
• The obstruction check
• A diagram of the cable route and electrical connection point
• A signed handover record, with the term and scope of the guarantee

Keep it aboard and in the cloud. The day you need it you will most likely have no connectivity to go looking for it.

How we approach it

At PescaSat we coordinate the installation with a certified naval communications integrator. Our role here is twofold: making sure the warranty and support terms are in writing before anyone steps aboard, and being your single point of contact for any incident, so you do not have to determine yourself whether the problem is the terminal, the fitting or the configuration.

The assessment is free and the final price is the same as going direct.

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Want to review the warranty and support terms before signing off an installation for your vessel or your fleet? Request a free assessment: we go through what you are actually being offered and what is missing — whether or not you go through us.