Thanks to everyone who responded regarding my earlier query about getting a Sat phone working with a post-paid Telstra sim card. There was some debate about what Telstra would and wouldn't do, so I thought I'd update with my own experience.
Having bought a sat phone from ebay (with the intention to resell in a few months), I went to a Telstra
shop to ask about their $10 post-paid casual plan.
Staff had no idea when I mentioned using the card in a Sat phone so after that I stuck with the line that it was for an "old Nokia" instead.
I was initially told I could get global roaming simply by ringing up Telstra. However later in a different store I was told this was not possible unless I had been a post-paid customer for 6 months.
I took out the plan and rang Telstra, who said they could activate the global roaming within 24 hours. Great, I thought!
36 hours later no global roaming so I rang to
check and discovered they had cancelled the application for it....because I hadn't been a customer, as referred to above. Outrageous that they didn't follow through with their initial representation, but perhaps predictable based on the warnings given here.
Anyway, they WOULD activate it if I paid $300 into my account. This will be refunded if I close the account with any money unspent. Annoying to have to pay this deposit, but gets around the problem nevertheless, so may work for some people.
What I don't know is how to find out how much sat phone calls will cost to make and receive (someone here mentioned $4 each way, but where is that info held? Also, do you only pay if the sat phone is answered?)
And another question - should I have data roaming activated or not? I remeber someone said get everything, but is there any chance my Sat phone will start communicating data and I'll be up for huge fees?
cheers
Carolyn