Since the government subsidy has been dropped on Sat phones their price has come down dramatically to the point where they are now a commodity item.
Several months ago I was in
Perth and I wanted to travel
home to
Melbourne solo via some very remote
places. I thought I would hire a sat phone for my safety.
I investigated the matter and found this out. Hiring a sat phone is not cheap. The main reason is that, you get a sat phone which may be necessary to save your life. In other words reliability is paramount. A hirer of phones does not know how they have been treated so they should basically refurbish them after every hire to ensure they are reliable. If the hiring fees seem cheap then this precaution most probably has not been taken and the reliability of the phone cannot be guaranteed. I brought a refurbished sat phone, which looked like new, from a Qld business and it was delivered within two days to
Perth for $360 all up. This is cheaper than hiring it and you have the unit forever. Now this unit is not the latest and greatest but it reliably makes calls if required and is what I believe every remote traveller should have, great insurance. The unit I purchased is on the Globalstar network and I had several occasions to use it in the middle of nowhere and apart from a slight delay was just like any other phone.
The plan was from Pivotel $15 per month access, $1 per 30 secs ringing out, no data or SMS, the cost to people ringing in is the same as any mobile, and when you are not using it you can suspend access and take it up again when you travel.
There may
well be other suppliers who can do similar deals and I suspect that prices are likely to get cheaper. I do not wish to advertise any business in particular so if anyone would like to know who I dealt with just PM me.
The bottom line is, it was dead easy to get a Sat phone at a great price, on a reasonable plan which now enables me to go solo to many
places I would not have dared before. Bring it on.