iridium phones

[toby]

can anyone advise me on what phone to buy for world coverage and any other imfo

[rumrunner]

JeanneP may be able to tell you what the latest is in USA..... several companies have come and gone, thats why I reckon there is a reluctance from any of the knowledgeable regulars to post a reply..

Oh I am sure some searching will dig up something for you.. have you tried your local telephone company ? Telstra OZ is an agent for some one ( or was ) but check locally with your supplier,just in case. Lets know how you get on

rumrunner

[Jan]

Iridium works great, and very important, works everywhere, even in your liferaft. Try that with you're Inmarsat... :-)

We circumnavigated with the old Motorola 9500 with datakit, no external antenne. Perfect reception everywhere. Almost only used it for data when on longpassages. Epirb for emergencies and SSB for social life.

Jan

[toby]

many thanks for that advice just what i was after

[Swagman]

Toby

You may wish to consider a handheld Thureya if your planned routes are EU or SE Asia.

Much lower cost units over Irridium, plus lower cost airtime - but only OK for coverage in the areas mentioned.

A good firm with an informative catalogue listing all options / benefits etc are the UK's Marine Electronics Services (MES). Site is www.mesltd.co.uk.

Good luck

JOHN

[Auzzee]

Hi Jan, did you use your iridium sat phone for email? If so is it a better proposition than SSB as far as speed and cost is concerned?

Cheers. David

[Jan]

David,

Yep, we used it for e-mail, but only on long trips. At anchor we used internetcafés.

Just with MS Outlook and plain-text messages. E-mail address was only known to some good friends/family to avoid spam. Worked great, but next time I would use Sailmail. In the long term it's cheaper and it has it's own spam-filter. Because even family/friends make mistakes and send you attachments of 1 MB....

BTW, we paid about 1,3 U$ p/minute (prepaid). Send / receive of 5 e-mails took about 2 minutes.

Jan

[toby]

So for recieving weather,would you recomend a sat phone or sailmail