Wilson brings shipboard mobile coverage to Mercy Ships

Wilson Connectivity has partnered with Mercy Ships to equip the Africa Mercy II with a cellular coverage system, extending its maritime work beyond the superyacht market.

Under the agreement, the hospital ship will use Wilson’s Zinwave distributed antenna system to provide mobile coverage for crew and volunteers as it moves between ports and regions. The system is designed to connect standard mobile phones to local carrier networks without separate logins or per-use charges.

Mercy Ships operates civilian hospital ships that provide free surgery and other healthcare services in African countries with limited access to safe medical care. More than 2,500 volunteers from over 60 countries serve each year on its two ships, including surgeons, nurses, dentists, cooks and engineers.

Reliable communications are a practical need for those teams. Medical staff must coordinate care on board and with hospitals on shore, while long deployments make regular contact with family and support networks especially important.

Maritime Shift

The project is also a commercial step for Wilson, broadening its activity in maritime communications. The company has previously supplied similar technology to superyachts and is now applying it to a vessel used for healthcare operations across multiple regions.

Zinwave’s wideband architecture supports cellular, private mobile radio and private 5G on a single infrastructure. According to Wilson, the system can adapt to different local carrier networks and spectrum environments as the ship moves between African ports, European maintenance locations and transit routes, without hardware changes or manual reconfiguration.

Wilson contrasted that approach with satellite-based systems, which it said can be more expensive and do not support native cellular calls in the same way. It added that some other maritime arrangements can become difficult to use when a vessel enters a region with different spectrum requirements.

“When your ship is a hospital serving patients across Africa, connectivity isn’t optional. Mercy Ships needed a system that works in every port, on every carrier, without anyone having to think about it. That’s exactly what Zinwave does. We’re proud to bring the same technology trusted by the world’s most demanding superyachts to an organisation doing this kind of work,” said Bruce Lancaster, Chief Executive Officer of Wilson Connectivity.

Operational Need

Mercy Ships described connectivity as part of the ship’s operating infrastructure rather than an onboard convenience. The organisation carries out thousands of free surgeries each year and works with local partners on broader healthcare support and training.

Wilson said its maritime distributed antenna systems are built for continuous operation with limited maintenance demands. It added that carrier-authenticated mobile networks give crews an alternative to relying on open Wi-Fi connections.

The Africa Mercy II deployment is currently in the planning stage. Neither organisation disclosed the financial terms of the arrangement.

For the past three decades, Mercy Ships has focused its work on partnerships with African nations. In addition to surgery on board, the charity supports training for healthcare professionals and improvements to the country’s medical infrastructure.

That international operating model creates a communications challenge unlike that of a fixed hospital or a vessel operating within a single national network. Staff and volunteers moving between ports need a service that works across jurisdictions and carrier systems, while ship operators need to avoid repeated technical changes as the vessel changes location.

“Our crew and volunteers give months and sometimes years of their lives to serve patients in Africa who have nowhere else to turn. Giving them reliable, hassle-free connectivity to stay in touch with their families and coordinate care is the least we can do. Wilson’s technology stood out because it works everywhere we go, on any network, without adding complexity for our team. That matters when you’re running the world’s largest private floating hospitals,” said Stacey Jennette, Manager of Corporate Partnerships at Mercy Ships.