I’ve been looking at the sateliite phone market for some time. Both equipment costs and call costs have dropped significantly through the years. That’s no surprise you might think. True. But, I mean, they really have dropped.
Although the only truly global satellite phone provider, Iridium, is still pretty costly to use, it is not the only alternative. I visited lately the Thuraya (local satellite phone service provider) website and to my shock(!) satellite phone calling costs can be quite… reasonable.
A call from a Thuraya phone to any destination in the world costs from $1.25 to $1.49 per minute (calls to another Thuraya phone are even somewhat cheaper). What’s more – the Thuraya satellite phones can have integrated GSM capabilities, which means you can swap to SAT/GSM mode whichever you find cheaper or more practical.
Now there are some minuses to all this hype. First, the satephone itself can be pretty expensive (circa $1000 for a phone) and secondly, though the satellite phone coverage area (check link for map) is huge and covers a nice part of the world, you cannot make satellite phone calls indoors or in your car without a special external antenna.
Well, it seems the satellite phone market is becoming more interesting after a dreadful time it went through a few years ago. We’ll see where it goes from here.
