S-63 Confusion

[SamsonovAnton]

Originally Posted by rgleason

From document above, the IC-ENC VARs are…

Out of all 8 companies listed at IC-ENC site currently, ChartWorld looks like the only one willing to sell S-63 charts to anyone.

• Others are either working with their own and partner/compatible ECDIS only, or simply act as proxies for chart selection and on-demand licensing.
• UKHO itself, even if they do sell charts directly, are not very public about this.
• Primar's site is partially broken, with dead links, but at least its distributor selection widget is functional again. All distributors I checked either don't publish relevant data, or sell SENCs (like CM93/3) instead of S-63 actually — for use in their own systems.
• I also found a couple of local resellers that claim to be connected with Primar. One of them publishes price rate list only (which looks similar to ChartWorld, but with significant differences on some occasions) and doesn't mention “S-63” at all. The other one just says: “Yes, we do offer some charts”.

So, is there really any other S-63 chart vendor besides ChartWorld? I mean “a really usable vendor” — with an easy to use online shop that anyone can register in, having only a S-63 user permit, and proceed to checkout without any hurdle?

[bcn]

Anton,

as our primary goal is to get the S-63 plug-in ready we did not make too much "market research" up to now.

But as you say it looks like that Chartworld is at this moment the only convenient "retail supermarket" for S-63 sets.
We have bought some charts there some days ago and those are working well.

From OpenCPN/o-charts there is an agreement with Chartworld in place. We are talking with UKHO and AHS (Australian Hydrographic Service) as well.
But no final conclusions yet.

The others are mainly focussed on the commercial and administration market - as the whole IHO/National HOs/RENCs/VARs world.
Generally they don't have procedures how to deal with a "final customer", have the fear that these will complicate their operations and thus prefer to delegate into the VARs (The Navionics, Jeppesen, Garmin, MaxSea etc.) or subordinate resellers.
Which results in vendor lock-in and official charts not at reach (at an interesting price level) for the common sailor.

All parties recognize that there is an issue - but perhaps we will have to help to find solutions. Those will not come by themselves.

There are OEMs which sell PRIMAR generated S-63 sets, but we have not contacted PRIMAR yet to get their point of view.

From our talks we gained as well the impression that there is a certain fear that selling "official charts" under license conditions different from the commercial world might undermine the whole S-63 construct.
Here the involved parties might learn from the software industry, where specific licences for the commercial and private use are common.


All this is on the do-to-list once we have the S-63 part fully operative.
Suggestions and contacts are very welcome.

Hubert

[oem]

Originally Posted by bcn

Anton,
Generally they don't have procedures how to deal with a "final customer", have the fear that these will complicate their operations and thus prefer to delegate into the VARs (The Navionics, Jeppesen, Garmin, MaxSea etc.) or subordinate resellers.
Which results in vendor lock-in and official charts not at reach (at an interesting price level) for the common sailor.

All parties recognize that there is an issue - but perhaps we will have to help to find solutions. Those will not come by themselves.
Hubert

From my correspondance last year with the danish government institution being responsible for the S57 charts I can confirm, that they are currently considering' which commercial and technical conditions should apply to chart distributors of S57-charts for private use/leisure sailors.

It will eventually be possible to buy charts for private use, but it will (probably ) require a separate chart distributor-entity buying charts from the governmental institution and then reselling to private leisure sailors. A model parallel to the one for commercial ships handling S63-permits etc.

By applying commercial and technical 'minimum conditions' they might eventually favour traditional chart distributors (Garmin, Navionics etc..) because it's all about money also for governmental institutions. Technical minimum conditions might require substantial investment also, e.g. certifying that OPCN displays everything according to standards and that official chart corrections are handled correct as well.

It's all new to everybody, so nothing is decided yet. Political influence is possible, also. In a danish pilot project, which was done last year, the pricing af charts was substantially lower than identical charts bought from chartworld.com.

The pilot project was based on a packaged solution on a smartphone/tablet equipped with 'Seapilot'-navigation software and integrated access to purchase S57-charts including later updates and corrections. So it's all technically ready, - the challenge is to get access to those S57-charts in OCPN.

[CarCode]

What about the EU in Brussels? They always talk about the freedom of commerce inside the European Union.

Gerhard