Putting satellite phone to global connection test
Iridium Satellite brags that it is the only truly global phone service: It can keep you connected no matter where you are, from the middle of the Amazon jungle to the North and South poles.
I wasn’t about to trek to Antarctica to verify the boast, because there were plenty of testimonials from scientists, rescue workers and military personnel working in the world’s most remote areas.
But when I did try out the phone as I traveled through Asia recently, it worked flawlessly. I had no dropped calls, the sound was clear with no delays, and I could often get through on my first try.
I found that the quality of the connection was better than when I used my cellphone but a notch below that of a land line: The voice of the person on the other end seemed slightly slurred. I used the phone on a beach in Bali, at an airport in Singapore, in downtown Seoul and on an island off the coast of South Korea.
At each stop, I called my home in Irvine, my office in Los Angeles and different locations within the countries I was visiting.
There are some major drawbacks, however.
The Iridium phone is much larger than a cellphone -- about the size of a cordless handset you would have at home, with a retractable antenna about the size of a felt-tip marker. So lugging it around can be inconvenient, particularly for a business traveler.
The phone doesn’t work inside buildings, although Iridium is working on technology that could help overcome that limitation. The system works only where you have an unobstructed view of the sky so that the phone can link up with one of the 66 Iridium satellites orbiting Earth.
Iridium charges about 75 cents to $1.75 a minute, depending on how much is prepaid, and incoming calls are free. By comparison, my Cingular cellphone service charged $2.49 a minute for calls to and from Bali and $1.99 a minute for Singapore.
The initial cost can be hefty. The Iridium phone can be purchased for about $1,500 or rented for about $35 a week from about 100 vendors that can be found through the company’s website at www.iridium.com.
All in all, the phone is really meant for those who work in areas that lack other forms of communication. Still, it may be useful for businesspeople who hopscotch through different countries and would otherwise have to navigate through myriad phone services.
My cellphone, for instance, worked in Bali and Singapore but went dead in South Korea, which uses a different technology. Instead of renting a local phone, I used the Iridium service.
The keypad of the Iridium phone has a layout and functionality similar to that of a cellphone. No matter where I was, I just had to press 00 and the desired country code and telephone number. After about 10 seconds, I was connected.
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