Recreational (hiking,
mountain climbing)
Iridium
Globalstar (check coverage maps!)
Business Traveler
Inmarsat
Thuraya (except the Americas, check coverage maps!)
“Low Cost” Emergency
Globalstar (check coverage maps!)
Alaska, North Pole, Antarctica
Iridium
Ocean
Iridium
Inmarsat
First of all, two important things the phone carriers don’t bring
much attention to:
1.
Satellite phones do not work indoors or in a car,
unless you specifically have hardware that connects to an external antenna on
the roof.
2.
Satellite phones are banned in some
countries. Most notably, you can be
arrested just for bringing one to India.
They will think you’re a terrorist.
Other countries that ban satphones include: China, North Korea, Cuba,
and generally any country that is extremely repressive. Do check it out before you go!
If the lack of ability to use it indoors doesn’t keep you
from buying, most likely the prices will.
Phones start at around $500, and service costs about the same as a cell
phone but with the added cost of around $1-2 per minute of airtime. Generally, the more you pay per month, the
more included minutes you get, and the less the additional minutes cost. But it bottoms out around $1 per minute
regardless of carrier.
Now for the details I didn’t want to bore you with earlier.
There are four major satellite phone carriers: Iridium,
Globalstar, Inmarsat, and Thuraya.
Satellite phones are “locked” into a carrier’s network, i.e. you cannot
use a Globalstar phone on the Iridium network, for example.
There is no “best” satellite phone carrier, since each has
its own advantages and disadvantages.
You will need to choose based on how and where you intend to use the
phone. Comparing airtime prices is a
tricky business and may lead to loss of sanity.
The satellite carriers will be most unhelpful in your
decision process, since of course every one of them will recommend their own
service. Even looking at online reviews,
you will find many people heavily biased to whatever phone they picked. It’s not a one-size-fits-all world!
For my recommendations above, I chose three parameters to
guide me, which I believe are the most critical. They are coverage area / orbit, likelihood to
maintain a phone call, and price. I did
not consider voice quality, since they are all fairly similar and it’s subjective.
Now, let’s examine how I came to my conclusions. First, the recreational user.
Inmarsat and Thuraya both use geostationary satellites,
which means if you’re on the wrong side of a steep hill or grouping of trees,
you will never get a signal. For this
reason, I would not recommend them when hiking and such. If you get injured, you may not be able to
move to where there’s a signal. But if
you have some sky visible, you will always be able to get a signal, some of the
time, from Iridium. The same is almost
true for Globalstar (less likely closer to the poles).
Next, the business traveler.
Here, I placed heavy emphasis on being able to maintain a long phone
call without being cut off. Only systems
with geostationary satellites can offer this feature, which limits you to
Inmarsat and Thuraya.
For the “low cost” emergency phone, I chose the one with the
cheapest service plan when no minutes are used.
Globalstar ties with Iridium at $25/mo., but comes with 10 airtime minutes
per month (Iridium has zero minutes on this plan). Additional minutes are $1.99
Globalstar, and $4.50 Iridium (ack!).
Consider also that a Globalstar phone is $500 new, whereas Iridium
starts at $700 for an old model used phone.
I want to also caution against using pre-pay service. If there’s an emergency, you don’t want to be
stuck without service and unable to refill just because you ran out of
minutes. This completely defeats the
purpose of having an emergency phone.
If you’re going to Alaska, Antarctica, or the North Pole,
you’re absolutely going to want Iridium.
You may be able to get Inmarsat or Globalstar service in certain
areas. But that’s pushing the limits of
their reach. You don’t want to lose
service just because there’s a low hill a few miles away, especially when
you’re far from civilization.
Lastly, those of you who have sea legs have the options of
Iridium or Inmarsat. Both will offer
excellent service at sea. You may want
to lean toward Inmarsat because of slightly lower pricing and (supposedly)
slightly better sound quality.
There are many other details I did not cover, because I felt
they were not particularly important.
Just beware that calling TO a satellite phone can be obscenely
expensive! You can get around this by
having the caller text message their phone number. Then you simply call them back.
Now, I want to cover sound quality once again. You may be concerned that the phone will
sound really bad or have a long time delay. Without getting into a lot of technical
detail, it boils down to approximately this:
Inmarsat: OK sound quality, medium delay
Iridium: OK to poor sound quality (it varies), short to
medium delay
Globalstar: Good sound quality, short delay
Thuraya: Good sound quality, medium delay
So, if sound quality and time delay were the primary
concern, you would gravitate toward Globalstar.
But all the sound quality in the world doesn’t do you any good if
there’s no signal.
Speaking of no signal, rumors of Globalstar’s death are
somewhat exaggerated. As I write this
(May 2013), brand new satellites are coming online, which will restore the
constellation to full service. Whether
or not the company will remain in business is another matter!
Background:
I am an electrical engineer, and I personally have only used
Inmarsat. But my interest in the subject
had led me to read a lot about the different phones and technologies. I realized it is rather complicated trying to
compare one phone carrier to another, especially for someone who has never
looked into this before. So I wanted to
make a simple user-friendly guide to pass along what I have learned.
