satphone and RAC services

Why not get you friends to email or text to your Sat phone, requesting you ring them, and then no one pays for an international leg

It's not really for friends/fam they will know I am away and on a sat phone and that it cost allot to call me so sms will be best. It's more for other people that call me that won't know I am away.

yeah, I think they need to email so it's free. Even international sms messages can be unreasonably costly unless it's through skype :-) Apparently calls to satphones are always international calls at $15-20 per minute.
Depends on one's budget...

Troll

I would guess that if you are using a satellite phone that you are not in mobile phone range. Wouldn't it therefore be useless passing over the mobile phone number?

With our phone someone always pays for a call. The caller is usually charged.

Dennis

I thought that a call to Australia from our inmarsat phone when in Australia was NOT an international call. Neither was a call from Australia to it when in Australia an international call. I must check that. We aren't interested in going overseas so I never looked at that in detail. The phone will not have any international roaming or whatever they call it.

Emails to our phone are free.

Phil

Phil

That is the point fwd the calls coming to my mobile to my sat phone and the user on the other end would know be any wiser.

calls out from inmarsat satphone are between $1.08 and $1.20 depending on plan (prepaid or not). All calls to inmarsat phone are at satellite international rates. The satellite itself has its own country code so a prefix of 0011 is necessary if calling an inmarsat phone number from Australia even if the sat phone is also in Australia.Has anyone sent sms messages from their inmarsat phone? Did they go through?

Thanks Rainbow (don't know your name)

From memory (hazy!) that sounds about right. Thanks.

Troll

I wonder what would be the cost of forwarding to the sat phone from the mobile service provider? It would, no doubt, be on your mobile account. Expensive??

We told them to send emails as they are free for us to download. The mobile is usually stuck somewhere in the glove box and not used until we are nearly home. We check for sat phone emails each evening and switch it off after that.

Unlike most travellers we are not interested in maintaining comms to home. They can email us if there uis an emergency. Other than that we are incommunicado.

Only used the phone once since we got it. That was for a breakdown.

Phil

Phil,

who did you call when you broke down? Did you just tell them your location and wait?

Brett

We called the Laura Roadhouse and told them the problem and they arranged for the part to be sent up from Cooktown and out to us on the Starcke Track. They did it all. I wouldn't bother with the nrma unless it was a tow job.

Two phone calls. First to give full details and then a following one, 30 minutes later, to see what they had in mind and to approve it. $40 something. Plus parts, labour and of course a slab.

I now carry two shockies, one front and one rear, with the "growing" list of spare parts.

Phil

I think that if you have a phone charging at the rate of $15 per minute you should dump it. Ours is around $1 to $1.50 a minute.

Maybe a typo???

Phil

I just checked with RACV and they said I could put my email address for the satphone (myphonenumber@message.inmarsat.com) in my profile and they would probably email -to -message me back any more details.
Has anyone tried messaging from inmarsat phone to other mobiles with any success? I understand it's pretty hit and miss.

vk1dx, it costs $1 or $1.20 to call out from satphone, but for people to call in to the sat phone is $15-20 per minute from land line.

Traps for the unwary here, with access and pricing. Need to do your research.

There's Iridium, Inmarsat, Globalstar and Thuraya.

ATM Globalstar have time gaps in their constellation coverage; claimed to be fixed this month.

Just checked.

We have an inmarsat phone. It looks like all calls to and from it are treated as International calls. The documentation is a little vague so I will have to dig it all out a check. I don't really care either way. Its only for emergenbcy so what the!!!

The kids are all grown up, married and totally independant with their own families.

Phil

Just checked.

We have an inmarsat phone. It looks like all calls to and from it are treated as International calls. The documentation is a little vague so I will have to dig it all out a check. I don't really care either way. Its only for emergency so what the!!!

The kids are all grown up, married and totally independant with their own families.

Phil

rainbowprof posted:
vk1dx, it costs $1 or $1.20 to call out from satphone, but for people to call in to the sat phone is $15-20 per minute from land line.


Spot on rainbowprof. Same as calling from a mobile.

I even tried one of those cheap Voip providers, 0.9c per min to the US. 1.9c per min to China and $14 per min to a sat phone.

Bits of what is said are correct but you can't generalise.

Call costs depend on who your land line provider is and who your satphone provider is - and at that point also whether an Iridium phone is on a Telstra Iridium plan or just on a GSM sim with international roaming turned on.

A call from a Telstra Landline to a Telstra Iridium satphone is only a couple of dollars a minute.

A call from a Telstra Landline, or a third party land line provider, to a Telstra GSM SIM with international roaming turned on, will only incur the normal cost to call a mobile. Then the owner of the SIM in the satphone incurs the call cost from a mobile to a satphone which used to be about $2/min when I first started suggesting this method years ago. Telstra have since bumped it up to about $4/min last I checked.

However, if you are on an Iridium phone from an international Iridium provider other than Telstra - eg. TR Telecom or similar - and someone calls you from a landline the prices vary widely. I'm pretty sure this situation applies to some of the other Satphones to eg. Inmarsat etc. They can be exorbitant.

Eg. When my wife called me on the Canning from an Iprimus Landline to a TR Telecom Iridum SIM in my Iridium phone, Iprimus charged that call at their top international rate. This was close to $20 per minute.

The best solution for infrequent users is still to buy a second hand Iridium phone (eg. Motorola 9505) and get their Telstra GSM SIM set up for international roaming. Then put that in their Iridium phone.

You can send & recieve SMS & make & receive phone calls. The only difference to having a Satphone account and dedicated Iridium number is that you pay for incoming and outgoing calls at about $4/min. The caller ringing you pays for the standard call to your mobile phone number.

That way you save a minimum of $360 per year through not having to have a Telstra Iridium account. I look at it that I can make or recieve 90 minutes of calls per year before I get to break even.

In the past 6 years I've owned two Motorola Iridium Phones. I've saved the twice the price of the a second hand satphone in that time. More than $2100.

Just don't leave the phone on if you get a lot of calls to your mobile number that your using, or add a sim only cheap plan to your Telstra mobile account that you only use in the satphone. (Call credit is shared on group accounts so the included call value gets used by your main mobile.)

Dave

very thorough and informative, Dave. That applies mostly if one has a mobile account with Telstra. And an Iridium that accepts a sim from a mobile phone. I rarely use my mobile so only have a simple prepaid. But the rates you quote are very reasonable if one uses it a fair bit.

Thanks for all the information.

Brett

Yep, totally agree Dave. Thanks for clarifying my generalisation.

Though if you use your mobile at all, it pays to get a second number as you discuss to avoid people calling you to have a 'chat' and irrevelent SMS.

Also Telstra have a $10 post paid plan with no contract. So you can go into a Telstra shop, add it to your account then cancel it after you return. I have gone from the TR telecom plans to this because of the indal costs as discussed and the inability of some callers to call international.

Re the SMS. My experience is that with TR telecom, SMS will work 2 ways to three and Optus, 0 ways to Vodafone and transmit only to Telstra.

Using a Telstra Sim, SMS will only work with Telstra mobiles but both ways.

You CAN SMS to Optus and Vodafail

But they cant to you on the Telstra sim in the satfone.

Tried it before buying to see what worked.

They got mine from Telstra but I didnt get theirs back to me.

Dave (geocatcher)

Our new inmarsat isatphone phone cost us all up just under $500. That included $80 worth of prepaid which will expire in three years. And no monthly costs or plan.

At our rate of usage and call costs of < $1.5 a minute, we will have to make excuses to use the left-over prepaid.

That also sounds heaps cheaper than your deal.

Phil

Re: vk1dx post above

yep, Phil. That looks like the system that I'll go with. Inmarsat covers more of the areas that I'm likely to move around in- seems to get the majority of Australia. Some of the others may not, I guess. Doesn't the prepaid expire after 2 years? SMS works to which carriers? (sorry, info overload and I got confused...)

Brett

Just remember that we only have it for emergency. Not for idle chit chat to the kids at home etc. They can stand on their own feet now. We only turn it on at 7:30 for 15 minutes and if there is an emergency. Other times its packed away out of the way. I also never take my mobile phone away with me.

As I said, ours is just for an emergency instead of HF, spot or an epirb.

Phil

yeah, good system Phil. Same idea here. I'll put a heap of emergency contacts in the address book before I go. Who did you get yours through? Isatphonepro? And the card? I thought they didn't sell prepaid in the US for satphones.

Brett

Firstly may I say that I do NOT have any commercial nor any financial connections with this mob. I am only supplying the contact details.

Try here Brett

Jackie Wilon
Product Manager
Safecity Services Pty Ltd
NSW Regional Office
Ph: (+61-2) 6335 5216
Fax: (+61-2) 6335 5229
E-Mail: jwilon@safecity.com.au

Phil

May I also add that we qualified for the Government subsidy. Having a crappy Vodaphone Australia Wide lack of coverage mobile phone account added heaps of just Canberra to Adelaide drives to our summary of expected "out of contact" criteria.

Phil

On my Telstra card that I now use for the Sat phone, I have turned off the normal message bank service and use the Telstra voice to text service.

If you get a call when the phone is out of service or off, you will get a text when you turn it on. That may be useful for you vk1dx given that you usually have it off. The voice to text is remarkably acurate too. It is free for the normal phone but probably about $1.00 for the sat phone. It saves calling in to to get messages too.

Thanks

But we am not really interested in receiving calls or anything on the sat phone. It's there for our emergency use when in the desert etc. If they need to the kids can send an email which will be downloaded whenever the phone is turned on.

That will do us. But others may find it helpful.

Thanks

Phil (love the solitude and quiet)

funnily, enough that's who I've been in contact with, Phil. Actually, I don't currently have a mobile but I don't think that's a requirement for the subsidy-just anticipating being outside of mobile range for a minimum of 180 days in the next 2 years is sufficiant to be eligible. I think my wife is going to get a 3g prepaid Telstra phone for about $60 that we'll have along with is if we need to communicate with people along the way.
Thanks everyone for your input on the subject.

It may help with qualifying for the subsidy if your wife does not get the 3g phone until later.

Here is how the bad coverage helps. We have a son in Adelaide. A safe drive is two days. When we go through Broken Hill those two days each way help getting to a total of 180 without mobile phone access. Four trips a year = 32 days over two years. If you have 3G you cannot use any because 3G has full access all the way.

Understand how Vodaphone bad access helps with only paying half price for the sat phone?

Phil

When I initially decided to buy a satfone I applied and was asked what cell phone network I was on and at the time was on Vodafone.

Was suggested I change to Telstra as was much better coverage and that the subsidy applied for OUT OF ALL COVERAGE regardless of my provider.

They must have got more lenient because I was refused as where I was going had a fair bit of Telstra coverage

well, that doesn't sound promising. The only solution might be calling a friend or family member and asking them to call the RACV with my location or coordinates and member number and outline of the problem. Then get them to email me back.

Hi Rainbow - Unless you have Satellite email, getting a reply by email won't be of any use. If you were in mobile phone range for internet you would also be in range for your mobile phone. Have you asked RAC whether they are willing to call you back on your sat phone? It is not something i considered in thinking about ringing them from a satellite phone. I have never experienced delays, but have not needed to call for a long time. Back then, my calls to RAC were always from a public phone box so no call back either. When arranging for parts to be send using my satellite phone, i always called them back to save them the cost of the calls. We have been lucky and got ourselves out of trouble so not needed to call RAC by sat phone.

Also if you are remote, additional charges may apply and be quite steep if RAC agent tows you some distance. Try and get yourself to civilisation if you possibly can before calling RAC.

Motherhen

The advice from RACQ (which only has a 13... number for breakdown service) was to satellite phone one of the branch offices which all have standard numbers. They could then redirect the call during business hours, and the call was automatically redirected out-of-hours. Whether this would actually work in practice though I have fortunately not had to find out.
Would this work with RACV?

Cheers, John

Why can't they make a VHF phone the size of a handheld VHF I wonder.

Sorry, I meant in the first case an HF phone.

Sigmund, with 100W transmitting power it is physically impossible to make it very small because of the heat disipated and the batterys have to be quite large. There are a few man packs but they are about the size of 2 - 3 house bricks.

Yes I've seen them.

Guess I need to find out why VHF hand-held transceivers are so small.

Because VHF hand helds are only 1 to 5Watts and have a range of kms to tens of kms ( or more if you are very lucky and conditions are right) as opposed to hundreds to thousands of km on a 100w HF.

Also the lower frequencies of HF dictate larger antennas etc so a little rubber duck antenna won't do anything in a HF though it does in a VHF or UHF.