Sattelite phone YES/NO?

[kitmax]

Originally posted by Roman:
...could anyone update me please on the best suppliers of Iridium "pay as you go" SIM cards?

[/B]

Hi Roman You could try contacting AST service provider at http://www.ast-uk.com/
Hi Sivrvorth: This company also has ex-demo sets for sale or hire, click 'special offers'
Regards Kitmax



------------------
Kitmax - Traveller
http://www.kitmax.com
Desert Pictures at http://www.kitmax.com/kit03_travel_g...velgallery.htm

[SaharaDave]

Originally posted by sivrvorh:
Hiya!

Need some outside input to settle a dispute between my husband and I. What is the general consensus about taking a sat phone through Africa? We are leaving for a year long africa trip in a few months and obviously the budget is getting tighter. We now need to decide what is luxury and what is needed. As a woman and knowing we are going off the beaten track, I feel having a sat phone will give me peace of mind.. Hubby feels no need for sat phone and would rather spend the money on a dash mounted GPS system ( we have the hand held etrex - will this not do the job?).
So please anybody with an opinion let us know, if you had one and never used/needed it, etc.
Ta
Renee

Im with you, as somebody else said would you go without spare wheels? great if you dont need them, but if you do!
Sat phone? would not go without, But to quote the book,who do you call? if The S hits the fan, Could be Handy...But thats my thinking...................

[SaharaDave]

in addition to last reply the thuraya phone i have has a great GPS and works well with the docking system and roof sat dish, great back up when hand held fails, as for Dr livingston and such like, a lot perished in desert because they could not raise help. not to mention other poor travelers that perished because there were No sat phones. Dave Good luck anyway with or without

[surfarirtw]

Hi we´ve been traveling with both a Sat Phone and E-trex and found that The e-trex is fine once you have a dash mount, We didnt last year and on corrugations it was all over the place. Also not long after getting back from africa it stopped working for no apparent reason (it was replaced free of charge even though it was about 4 years old) so bear that in mind when navigating! As for the Sat phone, we never needed it but were often reasured to have it, when travelling in remote areas on our own. It was also good to be able to keep in touch with home. If we were doing the same trip again would we take one? Yes.

[Luke]

Hi, just to add our 20p; we set off without GPS (the camcorder was a higher priority) but our families insisted we take a satphone.

Quite honestly not much use if you're stuck or have a mechanical, but for those special occasions (christmas, birthdays etc.) when you might want to park up away from crowds it's nice to be able to call the family.

Ours turned out very useful in another situation: if it all goes pear-shaped at home, our tenant stopped paying!
Not having to depend on telecenters was a boon, and on the Iridium Africa plan through Satcom Distribution our prepaid minutes cost less than most call centers in sub-saharan Africa.

It was also fun to text other travellers via the Iridium mail-to-text service.

It's sitting in a cupboard somewhere now, waiting for the next trip, by which time the batteries will be too knackered to take a charge...

We wouldn't have forked out for one, so I have my dad to thank for the help it brought us.

A dash-mounted GPS would have been a nice gadget (very visible too) particularly useful in some of the cities (the vector maps available for most of Africa are so poor it's not really worth the investment).

More traditional navigation methods still work and have the advantage of being less nickable :-)

Cheers
Luke

Rhona & Malcom, good to see you're home safe!

[surfarirtw]

Hi Luke, not home but reasonably safe in Argentina waiting for car to arrive into Chile in a couple of weeks!
And we still have our Sat phone, we will have to extend the validity of the remaining minutes for the next couple of months which we can do for us$40 a month, but compared to last time the minimum number of minutes valid for one year is 500 compared to 200! so its getting more expensive to have for emergencies!