Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Sandman
I know the CG will call you up on Sat phones. I know of a fellow used one on several occasionals with the USCG. I think they (the CG) prefer it actually. I would bet that the sat phone exceeds the published regs.
Globalstar had massive problems with satellites and offered fantastic deals for a while because everyone was buying iridium. Iridium phones are the standard. They are very solid. I think but I am not sure that globalstar has fixed a lot of their problems but there reputation was hurt. I am sure they are still offing deals to get you to switch. I was on a boat with a globalstar phone several times and it had no signal for hours at a time. Then when you did get a signal it dropped calls. Most canyon fishermen I know of who had them made the switch to iririum. Again I think they replaced a lot of their equipment but it was a loong time coming and they lost a lot of customers for good.
There are a few other choices. There is a new one called Inmarsat, I don't know anyone who has one but they have a lot of neat features.
If you want to rely on it in an emergency you really need reliability. So make sure that there will be no dropped calls.
The iridium phones that I have used work great, almost like talking on a land line. but the $/min is not exactly free. To bad vonage does not work offshore....Woooh hooo.... woo, woooh whooo...whooo woo
THT site has a few threads on this topic that are worth reading
|
Inmarsat has been around for quite a while, just not in the lower end market.
You've probably seen these on yachts for the better part of 15 years now
Threaded Mode