The FELCOM18 is FURUNO's new Inmarsat-C Mobile Earth Station. It provides a high quality two-way telex and data link between ships and other parties at sea or on land. All functions and services of the Inmarsat-C system are provided: EGC (Safety NET/FleetNET), distress message handling, two-way digital store-and-forward messaging including polling, data reporting, E-mail, etc. Distress alert are initiated by the remote distress alert unit. The distress message including own ship's position is easily edited. A PC can be used for editing the message via Ethernet when it is supplied with dedicated software.