Satelite Phone

I have had an Inmarsat Pro sat phone for the last 18 months - no problems at all - and its a pre-paid unit - so no plan and monthly fees.Mine cost $123.75 with the assistance of the 85% government subsidy. I live outside mobile coverage area.

Most people should be able to get the 50% subsidy where you have be be 'outside' a mobile area for 180 days over a 2 year period. 15 mins in any one day outside mobile coverage= one day. A simple itinerary should see you right.

John

Strange you got a lot of drop outs when using Iridium...... are you sure it wasn't Globalstar.

We use two different carriers for our satellite phones, Iridium through Pivotel and Optus Mobile Sat through Optus....... two totally different services.

The Optus Mobile Sat is what we use in our service vehicles and are permanently mounted, the Optus Mobile Sat is a commercial based system that is very stable and offer a few benefits over the others..... Optus Mobile Sat is different to the Thuraya satellite service. Optus Mobile Sat uses an Optus high cost commercial satellite whereby Thuraya uses their own low cost commercial satellite...... Optus is a reseller of Thuraya.

For general travelling we use a Motorola Iridium phone through Pivotel, we have found this to be the best cost option as we can use it in the mount kit or carry it whilst walking our when using the motor bike.

We chose Pivotel because they offered reasonable out going call costs but the big draw card was the cost for others to phone us..... Iridium on Pivotel costs the same for someone calling us as it would them calling a normal mobile phone in Australia and the phone number issued is just like a normal mobile number.

Some other onsellers use overseas based service providers that can cost anyone phoning you BIG dollars, in some cases $14-$23 per minute...... I'm sure some family members would get a little cranky if it cost them over $100 for a 5 minute call!!!

The other down fall of some is not being able to dial Australian phone numbers like 000, 13, 1300 and 1800 numbers..... and when you want to dial a local standard number you have to use overseas prefixes

On our Iridium we can dial all Australia numbers just as you would from a landline or mobile.

Remember "nothing is for free or cheap", there is always a catch and what may seem cheap can become very expensive if not for you but others.

Hi ozychris

Like John above, I also have an IsatPhone, but only had it for a short time. In August last year I gave it a good try out in the Great Victoria Desert and across the Nullarbor.

I was able to lock on to Satellites very quickly and never had any issues with drop outs. I am aware that calls to this phone can be dear, but advise those that need to know they can contact me for free via the free SMS Messaging through the internet. In return I can them give them a return call for less than $1 per minute.

I purchased mine to add to my safety umbrella in the event that I require urgent outside help and cannot get out on my HF radio.

The best part about my phone, it is pre paid, no lock in monthly contract fees and with the Governments 50% subsidy, I was able to get the phone for under $400, which is cheaper than many other well know mobile phones.

The agent where I purchased my phone has used has used his own same type of phone all through Great Britain and Europe, as well as many remote locations in Australia with the same great results.

I am a very happy and satisfied customer and have peace of mind that if all else fails, have another avenue to contact the outside world.


Cheers

Stephen

I have had an Inmarsat Pro sat phone for 18 Months and had no problem using it to call people from the phone in locations around Perth and the Northwest of WA. In tests I have found it hard for me to get connected the other way around, that is when ringing the sat phone from my home landline. Rang Telstra and was told - best of luck it’s a common problem, put up with it. That being said, it’s suitable from my purposes and I only ring out on it – no incoming calls. I'd be interested if others have had the same problem.
Regards Dennis

We have a prepaid Isatphone. No hassles at all. Only outgoing contacts have been GPS location emails to home so that the family know we are still alive and where we are. We are not into chatting, I don't even use my mobile phone, so I cannot comment about long call drop outs etc. No hassles with short calls. Only made a couple without issue. No emergencies or anything other than "We are alive" calls or to change a booking.

I have a bunch of numbers on the back of the phone to '000' centers in case they are needed and easy instructions (in English) for anyone to follow to make a call. If I am unable then I need any Tom, Dick or Harry, or Mary, to be able to pick up the phone and make a call without any input from me.

Took it to on our trips to; The Kimberleys, Kakadu, the Gulf of Carpentaria, Cape York, Simpson and on many trips in the Vic high country. Naturally no good in valleys. All GPS emails went through without a hitch.

Phil

FollowupID: 779397 Submitted: Friday, Jan 18, 2013 at 11:32
ozychris posted:
Thanks for the replies. We have an iridium extreme 9575. We found that calls without the antena dropped out very quickly. If we used the antena is was much better but still some drop outs. We had clear skies and not buildings or mountains where we were.(Vrilya).

Still don't know whether to change to inmasat,thuraya or stay with iridium.

We only want a couple of months and most plans are 12 months or you pay an extra $100. Are there any that are better for short term than pivitol.any style of satelite.
Last year we had to bring the phone in from the USA as there were none in Australia and we wanted the extreme. We got the pre paid plan from the company we bought the phone from and as far as that went we had no problems in fact we had $ left.

Do we change or not? Is it reasonable to not be able to get satelite for a number of minutes at a time?

G'day, we have our own Telstra Iridium Sat phone, and also one for work here, and have used them in other jobs around the country (all Iridium). We have never had an issue with Iridium dropping out, and is probably one of the most reliable of Sat signals.
Are you sure you have the antenna extended, and pointed straight up when talking?
That can be an issue.

Cheers
Al

Here's a comparo of some satphones/comm sat constellations:click

Note that this was commissioned by Inmarsat.

It was on the basis of this and user reports that we went for the Isatphone Pro. The prepaid deal we got was very reasonable.

Having used it over approx 12 months however my estimate is that about half of the attempts to connect fail. A strong connection in one spot can be followed several hours later by a failure to connect. I'm hoping that the new firmware due Feb. 8 might improve this.