Iridium Satellite Phone

The boat had a built-in Iridium Sailor system installed but I had trouble getting it to function and finally gave up trying to get it to work. I opted to remove the system in order to send it in for repairs and purchased the new Iridium Motorola 9555 handset. At the time I was in St. Martin - an optimal location for duty-free purchases, and purchased both the handset and a 500 Minutes of airtime. These minutes last a year and can be extended by adding minutes and the costs runs to about US$1.50 a minute. I used the phone when away from other means of connecting to the internet in order to send/receive e-mails as well as to download weather reports pertinent to my travels. The Iridium system is currently the only truly global satellite phone system and it works just about anywhere. The Inmarsat system covers much of the globe while the Globalstar and Thuraya systems are currently geographically limited. The data transmission rates with Iridium are abysmally slow and cumbersome, but it remains better than nothing. Considering the price of terrestrial cellular phone roaming fees, the $1.50 a minute rate doesn't seem as exorbitant as it first seemed.