[digi_owl]

> Iridium has some advantages. It has coverage at the poles, where GEO sats typically do not. The mobile units can be small(ish) and handheld. But it also has some significant limitations. Datarates are in the 2400bps range. Latency goes all over the place due to the way the calls get routed through the constellation. Dropped calls are common.

I seem to recall the south pole base use multiple iridium phones in a aggregation setup as a backup data channel.

[jandrese]

One of the common solutions bonds together a bunch of channels to get you a nominally 128kbps datalink. You will pay through the nose if you use any significant portion of that bandwidth however (prices start at $13/mb, but can be brought down to as little as $1.27/mb if you purchase a full gigabyte up front each month).

http://www.satphonestore.com/tech-browsing/iridium-nav/iridi...

Note that this solution also removes one of the nominal advantages of Iridium. You can't hang it from your belt, the antenna weighs 11kg and is the size of a large punchbowl. It also requires a separate rack mounted modem.

How much would your browsing habits changed if loading an average webpage[1] cost you $31.80?

[1] http://httparchive.org/interesting.php