"The ships will have uptime for a couple of hours a day for mail, defense Web access and the Internet, but some ships will have constant connectivity and all mail and content filters common to a standard office."

All sailors will use a specified identification number for identity confirmation. Rose said most ships have on average 60 public workstations; these were purchased some 18 months ago under the Australian Defense Force's network-centric warfare project.

KAZ beat CSC, Tennix, Lockheed Martin and ADI for the contract.

Commodore Longbottom, Navy systems director general, said the key feature of the contract is value for money for the commonwealth and improved service delivery for people at sea.