| The keyword of the problem there is Iridium. Their SBD (short burst data) and in fact all their services are just extremely expensive. This reseller doesn't really seem to put much margin on it. When I had a sat phone (needed to travel sometimes to questionable places for work) I used Thuraya which is much cheaper for airtime. 40€ gets you a whole year's worth of inbound service (airtime) and about 15 mins of call credit for outbound. With iridium that gets you about one month. But Thuraya only had 2 active sats. One geostationary over the middle east and one over the far east. No service over the Americas. The Asian one failed early this year and the coverage for the region which can't be met by the other one is now inoperable. The middle east sat is actually beyond its planned service life and if it goes down there's no immediate backup. Though a replacement is ready for launch according to Wikipedia. You also need visibility of the southern horizon (or northern, if you're in the southern hemisphere). So for hiking in valleys it's not a good bet. The same goes for Inmarsat for that matter. But they do have more sats. Iridium in contrast is fully worldwide, has a robust constellation of many low earth orbit sats that move across the sky so you don't need to see a fixed point. It's more robust for emergencies. But the price is much higher. It's a trade-off. You get what you pay for. As I no longer travel for work but do hike, I ditched the Thuraya and got a Garmin InReach which runs on iridium. But that costs more than Thuraya even though it can only send messages. Though with their latest cost increase I might just drop it and find something cheaper. Maybe Starlink direct to cell. |
Cynically I assume this is because it would be no different than their expensive service in practice, and cannibalize their premium offerings.