Iridium phone

[CaptJamesCook]

Which model do you have and what plan do you have?
What are your cost per month?

James Cook

[joel383]

I have an iridium 9575. I was a little disappointed in reception... But I'm in Alaska. I'm told its better down south. With some patience I was able to send and receive forecast info.

Not thrilled with the cost of operation though. Looking for options in the HF email realm.

[TRACKAmap]

We're using the Iridium GO. Good below deck reception out of the box but perfect with an external antenna, always on 5/5 bars of service. Other than as an emergency phone we use it for weather updates (grib files sent to a connected laptop) and it sends and receives emails and sms fast. Internet is pretty limited but good enough for news updates.

Tracking function is also limited, so I made my own program. Details in the commercial post section.

We have an unlimited plan, $125/month. Pricey but weather updates can be 30+ minutes of data use per update and we can send as many emails to friends and family as we want and use as many tracking messages as we want too.

Shannon

[Meanderthal]

We went with two way texts instead of a satphone: the Garmin/Inreach Explorer. Very happy with it. Full unlimited waypoints and text messages, spot weather reports, trip tracking, facebook status reports, and emergency alert capability for $75/mo. Limit the waypoints, text messages, and weather reports and you can do $20/mo plus a per text fee over 10 messages. When landbased, the service can be deactivated (month minimum).

[bgallinger]

I bought the IRIDIUM GO. Cost is $126/mo. It worked well but it's just too much money considering other options available in the Bahamas (Batelco, Chris Parker etc.). I'm thinking I may rip out the expensive hardware and sell it.