More on sat phone service

Recently I reported difficulties with a certain sat phone service. I believe that others have had similar experiences with lack of a reliable service in *some* areas. After 3 lots of "we'll get back to you" I finally emailed them somewhat pointedly, and to their credit, they replied.
Part of the information received is, I believe, of interest to sat phone users/buyers on this forum.
I'll quote part of their email. (yes I've checked that this info is in the public domain and they don't mind me using it).

"First of all, I would just like to point out, our service is a satellite service, and is used the majority of the time for people traveling in remote areas. Also mentioned in my previous email, I quoted that the constellation issue has mainly affected the northern region of Australia and not the whole of Australia. "
At present, we are still receiving positive feedback from customers and not just negative feedback"

"We have recently been advised that we are experiencing a constellation issue. Some of our satellites are experiencing some power issues, meaning that it is outputting lower output power than usual. We are basically putting this down to the old age of these satellites. Because of this, and our LEO (orbiting) constellation, when the satellites exchange to the satellites having problems, this may cause longer than normal delays in connecting to a satellite and also may cause drop outs during a call. However, the constellation issue has not affect all customers in Australia, however, mainly in the northern regions of Australia.

We currently have on-going maintenance trying to assist in improving the power problems on these satellites, so we are looking at seeing an improved hopefully by the end of October/November. Globalstar USA have advised that we will be launching 8 new satellites in the first quarter of 2007, and we anticipate the launch to be completed by end of May 2007. However, we hope to see improvement between now and then with the maintenance."