Irridium satellite phone experience ???
 

I would like to use an Irridium phone on my overland trough Africa. Anyone has experience with these things like cover and costs ? cheers Derek-Jan,The Netherlands

note: i know they went bankrupt a while ago but they came back in the air last year august after a big 6 year contract with the pentagon. see www.iridium.com

[This message has been edited by Derek-Jan (edited 15 August 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Derek-Jan (edited 15 August 2001).]

Good luck with Irridium .... they went bankrupt some time ago. Try Inmarsat ... :-)

If you live in the US you can buy a phone from Voicstream www.voistream.com. They have great rates and their phones work all over the world. The rates are really cheap when roaming the world. Roughly 25 cents a minute, depending on the country. Compared to iridiums $10 a minute. Thats a big difference. Happy travels.

Check out thuraya.com, though only for northern africa/arabia
(much cheaper - see Sahara forum radio/sat comms for more)

Chris S

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Author of Sahara Overland and the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook, among other things

http://www.sahara-overland.com

Check out my post on the Sahara Board!

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[This message has been edited by REX (edited 30 September 2001).]

I would go with www.GlobalStar.com . Thuraya’s service, although works fine most of the time, uses a single satellite that is very high so there is an annoying delay. I heard Iridium are back in business but the service had a few problems.

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A.B.
www.ShortWheelbase.com

I'm just back from a 4x4 trip to Libya (yeah, I've a 2x1 too...), and the Iridium phone I had worked great, and was really useful when the front diff decided to break in the middle of nowhere squared...

I used the Motorola 9505, which is a ruggedised handset with good battery life.

I got mine through Stratos - http://www.stratos.ca/ though the Iridium site lists all their dealers.

Calls are about $1.50 per minute.

Nick.

Iridium seems to be the cheapest ($1.50/min anywhere in the world). GlobalStar charges you international calls depending on where you are calling from or to ( http://www.globalstarusa.com/cgi-bin/RateCalculator.cgi )

A big advantage of Iridium is the free text messages that can be sent from the web to any receiver (see "Send a Satellite Message" on http://www.iridium.com/ )