"People expect to be able to stay in touch wirelessly these days," Marjerison said.

Manuel said coverage with the WMS system is pervasive and "works well," even though metal on board a ship makes wireless connections more challenging. The satellite connection tends to create a small delay in voice calls, "but that is generally your expectation when you travel," he said.

Manuel said he investigated a variety of wireless technologies two years ago, but settled on WMS partly because WMS relies on a remote monitoring system provided by LGC Wireless of San Jose, Calif. The remote monitoring is done by WMS from Florida for about 30 ships, to help reduce the number of dropped calls and improve call quality, Manuel said. "We're not in the telephone business," he said.

LGC also allows WMS to use fiber or category 5 or 6 copper cable to connect the distributed antennas to the cellular switching hardware, which is flexible and easier to use on a ship than rigid coaxial cable, Manuel said.

Competitors to LGC's technology include MobileAccess Inc. in Vienna, Va.; Inner Wireless Inc. in Richardson, Texas; RadioFrame Networks Inc. in Redmond, Wash.; Nokia Corp. in Keilalahdentie, Finland; Ericsson in Stockholm, Sweden; and Motorola Inc. in Schaumberg, Ill., said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates in Marlborough, Mass.