Satellite Phone

Why use a Sat Phone?

It stands to reason, that travellers need a communication system that they can rely on. Since satellite technology has evolved and is now a realistically priced solution for communications, there has been a insurgence of the use of satellite phones (satphone) in business, education and recreation. The uptake of satellite technology is most obvious in the tourism sector, with hand-held satellites easy to use, easy to obtain, and providing a reliable, private, communication service to users.


Sat phones are best suited to people who wish to enable other people (family/work) to make direct dial voice calls with you whilst you are travelling, Call charges are still a little higher than regular mobile phone charges, however the use of the satellite phone would be limited to essential communication only. Most satphone will have a voice mail box and some have SMS.

One of the most appealing features of the newer satphones is the dual-mode functionalities in some handsets - there are now GSM/Satphones and CDMA/Satphones. This means that you can own one handset that can be both your mobile phone and your satphone. This is particularly useful now that the improvement in mobile coverage Australiawide (particuarly CDMA) means that the emergency phone you rely on when heading into the remote bush is the same as the phone you use for day-to-day social and business use back home.

To Hire or Buy?

You can now pick up a sat phone for as little as $1995 connected to a plan. Most service providers will charge a connection fee (flag fall), a monthly access fee (which may include a certain amount of free calls) and then your call costs. Call costs can vary and are usually lower per minute if you are on a higher month plan (similar to mobile phone plans).

Before buying a satellite phone, check out if you qualify for the Government Subsidy. Applications are open until June 2009. This can save purchasers up to $1100 off the purchase price of buying a satellite phone and this may go down to $1000 in July. For more information on this subsidy please click: Dept Broadband Communications and Digital Economy (DBCDE).

Hiring may be a more cost effective option for some travellers, particularly if you wouldn't use it in your normal course of life and work (although note the comments above, dual-mode handsets that are either GSM/Sat, or CDMA/Sat are available). By hiring, you will only pay the access fee for the time of the hire period and so this is a very flexible option. Hiring your satphone will also mean you benefit from using the latest hand-sets and accessories, which hopefully means they are the most reliable and compact. Additionally, if you have hired a satphone and experienced hardware failure (even accidental damage), then a replacement can be organised quickly.

There has been a massive increase in the number of companies now offering sat phones for hire, with many offering short term rental terms, easy pick up/drop off options (many will even courier the phone to your door from any state of Australia), standard accessories for charging by 12v/240v, external antennas for improved mobile reception etc. These companies will normally have a service arrangement with their preferred satellite provider, which takes away the hassle of working out plans and fees. However, depending on how you use your sat phone (ie. mostly to receiving incoming, or mostly to make outgoing, calls), you may find one service provider is more suited to your needs than another.

Instead of a user needing to be in a satellite footprint with a ground station like other providers, the Iridium satellite has the ability to transfer a call to another satellite and so on until the call is transferred to the Iridium ground station, which for Australian users is in Tempe USA. This cross linking provides Iridium with Global coverage but also means that there can be a noticeable delay on the call. The main advantage of cross-linking is that you can use the Iridium phone in areas with significant canopy cover. The facilities offered by Iridium include Voice and Data at 2.4kb/s, and Direct Data with compression at 10kb/s.

Nice Features

The Iridium website enables global paging (ie. friend/family uses the website to send text message to the subscribers satellite phone) which are received in 7-15 minutes. Standard emails can also be sent to the phone (limited to 160 characters per message, 5 messages per 10 minutes, and up to 150 messages per month).

Iridium Handsets

These hansets are the Motorola 9500 and the newer model Motorola 9505.
The magnetic mount antenna which improves in-vehicle satellite reception is very useful and can be mounted to the external part of your vehicle (roof or bonnet).

Nice features

TMS enables enhanced capability of the Iridium satellite service via a standard Telstra GSM SIM card so SMS, Message Bank, MEMO, Pocket News on Demand can all be accessed via the Iridium handset. Obviously, over time, more products that are available on GSM / CDMA will become available on TMS.

Telstra Mobile Satellite Handsets

These handsets operate on standard Iridium handsets.

Coverage

Pivotel's Iridium satellite coverage is provided by a constellation of 66 Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites operating at an altitude of 800km. Signals from an Iridium phone are received by the constellation of LEO satellites and then relayed from satellite to satellite to the ground-based gateway in the USA.

The Pivotel service provides users with mobile phone coverage right cross Australia and the immediate 200 nautical miles off the Australian coast. Outside of the primary Australian coverage zone your Pivotel Iridium service provides full global coverage at Pivotel’s international roaming call rates.

Coverage

Globalstar provides quality voice and data communications services right across Australia and its surrounding waters - out to New Zealand, New Caledonia, and up to 500 nautical miles into the Southern & Indian Oceans.

MobileSat offers Voice, Fax and Data (including email) at 2.4kb/s. This data rate is very slow in comparison to the data rates available on ADSL and other high speed internet connections available today, however where there is no other means of communication this system can be a lifesaver.The system has separate numbers for Voice, Fax and Data with voice mail and call diversion as standard features. This system is vehicle bound and cannot be easily removed for operation away from the vehicle (although portable case options upwards of $6000 are available).

Portable systems now around $2,995. Installed types consist of a large spherical ball which will maintain a lock on the satellites while on the move - mostly used in tour buses and on boats.

Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) - delivers voice and broadband data mobile communications. BGAN enables users to connect via their laptop to the internet at the fastest speeds ever offered. The standard service offers access to the internet at speeds up to 492kbps. It enables you to access e-mail and other applications, browse the Internet and send large file attachments. BGAN also offers an 'on-demand' Streaming IP service at speeds up to 256kbps, and supports ISDN. You can make phone calls at the same time as accessing data applications via a standard desktop phone, custom handset or Bluetooth handset/headset, depending on the BGAN terminal. Voice mail and other standard 3G supplementary services are also available.