Satphone service providers - new info

Hi all,

A follow up to ptcrowe's post and thread which I contributed to - new information to hand.

A mate of mine has contacted the Iridium service provider TR Telecom who I was talking about in this thread.

I was advising the thread that the alternative to an account was a GSM SIM set to international roaming (Telstra) in your Iridium satphone was an alternative to having an account. Calls to and from phone within Australia are charged at $3 a minute. No Iridium account required.

Further to that for medium usage requirements may be this alternative from TR Telecom.

They will let you take out a $30 per month plan with normal call rates (about 60% cheaper than the above method and no charge to receive) BUT the big difference over Telstra is that when you come back from the trip you can contact them and put the account and phone no on hold for $15 per month until next time you need it.

Short or long periods of activation are fine, and apparently there's no limit on the number of times per year you can do it.

I'm going to give it a try. That way I can leave the phone on to receive calls IF I need to and don't get charged to receive calls from all and sundry the same way I would if I left my GSM SIM in it.

Hope someone else finds it useful.

Dave