Thuraya Sat phones.

Hi Kanga1, we went through this last year and was looking at the Thuraya phone, did all the advantages and disadvantages and finished up with the Iridium.

The big problem with the Thuraya was that you had to find the satellite with it, meaning you had to point the antenna a certain direction to where the satellite is. (had enough problems with Globalstar with that.)

The plus with the Thurya is if you are changing from Globalstar (which is what we did) you could keep your current number, it's very light and compact, rumour at the time was that they were having a few problems with the handsets but that could be ironed out by now. Thuraya was also cheaper. As far as how good it actually is, having chosen the Iridium I can't comment on that but heard it was OK.

The Iridium has been good, the major problem with that one is having to have the International number, can become expensive for the person calling you, however there are ways around that as well.

We went into a place in Osborne Park here in WA and the girl there was fantastic, they sold both phones and she helped us decide which phone was best for us, she gave us all the bad and good of each phone, we were very impressed with her service.

All in all the main reason we didn't take the Thuraya was because we had so many headaches with the Golbalstar/ Pivotel, we didn't want to chance problems again so went with the tried and trusted.

Hope that helps a little

Cheers

D

Cheers for the responses guys, the Jury is still out re deciding, we had an Iridium 9505A phone for our trip last year and sold it to "update" it this year, Dunworkin do you have the car with the same registration plate "DUNWORKIN" in the Golden Bay area? I see it around and wonder. Thanks again. Happy Trails, Kanga1.

"Is the coverage at least as good as Iridium"

Surely you answered your own question??
Its coverage you want and need first and foremost and if you know that the Iridium system provides the best it begs the question as to why you would consider anything else??

While not directly related to coverage, ease of use etc, and even tho I dislike Telstra immensely, I couldn't buy a phone that operates thru Optus because the majority owner of Optus is the Singapore Govt.

At least with Telstra, scumbags tho they are, they are Australian.

Just my 2 bobs worth (probably worth less than that).

cheers

Kanga,

depending on how long you expect to be out of normal Next G Telstra coverage (if that's what your normal mobile uses) you can put your Next G SIM into the Iridium handset and use your normal mobile number.

This also means no contract, no monthly fees. You just need to buy the handset outright.

cheers

ps sorry about the excessive use of the word "normal". That's not normal.