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.
Thanks Phil, for informing us of this. I hope that the staffers find the website informative. If they read also the comment stream, they will realize how much anger the current IRS procedures are creating throughout the world amongst expat. We are just little people, so it is nice to see that the internet has given us a voice that might even eventually be heard at the highest levels of the government.
By: IRS Attorney on May 23, 2012
at 9:30 pm