Telstra $10 mobile accelerate and <span class="highlight">iridium</span>

A Telstra shop can't help you. You have to ring telstra and ask to speak to disconnections. They are the only division of telstra that can offer that sim.

Cheers
Peter

gwur,

This might help?



Can you let us know how you get on please?

Bob

If your intended use is just for emergencies you can use your normal Telstra mobile sim if it is on a post paid plan with IR.
Calls cost more but it does work.
Downside is that in an emergency you have to physically put it in the satphone.
Might be easier and more cost effective to just connect to Iridium on a $35 a month plan as it does include a small call allowance. We've done that as we are usually away quite a bit even for short trips out of mobile coverage.

Mine works fine. From my Telstra account just now.


Options - Mobile Accelerate Casual Plan $10



Perseverance. They always deny it exists till you get lucky!

I've been trying to get onto one of these through Boost and Southern Phones, both of which use the Telstra network and both of which used to have 5$ and $10 postpaid plans that worked with the right Iridium handset.

I haven't tried through Telstra

Unfortunately the SIMS issued by those retailers for the cheap post paid plans no longer work on Iridium, even though I had international roaming activated. They would allow the phone to log on, but then throw up "Restricted Area" and then no service other than emergency was available. They appear to be grandfathered - I have a friend who has a $5.00 plan with Southern Phones and it works. The $5 plan is no longer available, replaced by a $10 plan. It didn't work.

The Cook and I both have regular Telstra mobile post paid plans with international roaming. In remote areas we leave her phone for normal mobile use for family when in coverage and put my SIM into the Iridium handset for emergency and "essential" communications.

From what I can make out on my itemised bill after making and receiving a few test calls through Iridium, charges are as follows:

To make a call: 50c connection, $1.50 per 30 sec.
To receive: $1.00 per 30 sec

I didn't test SMS, but Telstra's published Iridium rates for SMS are 50c for a 160 character text.

That's all considerably cheaper than Pivotel's $22.00 casual plan and for just a short "hello kids" phone call not too bad.

I have an up to the minute update on the $10 Accelerate Plan.

It is no longer available, As I mentioned earlier, to keep me as a customer, part of the deal was they offered to drop my $10 Accelerate plan down to $5.

Last night I tried to ring my sat phone with this sim and It didn't ring, tried to ring my mobile from my sat phone and it didn't ring.

Long story short, they couldn't put me back on the $10 Accelerate because it doesn't exist, after a lot of communication and bullshitting me around they have now put me on $20 Go Mobile Casual Plan and are discounting me $10 a month to make it still $10 a month. I can make calls on this plan.

So it does actually look like the $10 Accelerate plan is not available anymore.

Hope that helps.

I was on the $10 accelerate plan but changed up to the $20 plan.
Works for me as I have unlimited local/national calls in the city and unlimited/sms in the city and sat.