Satellite Phone Rental
My wife and I are taking a trip this summer over in Arizona, Utah, Joshua Tree areas and I've been in those areas before where there was quite a gap in cell phone reception. The problem is I will be ...
Forum Discussion
ktmrfs wrote:
if you rent a sat phone, make sure it is an irridium network phone. Verizon offers irridium and inmarsat. I've have several friends going through sat phones and irridium is top of the list for reception since it uses LEOS sat's and you can in almost all cases get reception for at least 15 minutes every 20 minutes. Bottom of the list is the globalstar (spot) sat phones that use a GEOS sat network. If you don't have a clear view of the southern sky you are SOL. everyone I know that tried one ended up very unhappy with terrible reception.
And on any sat phone, for reception you really need to either be out of a vehicle or have an external antenna. they work very poorly in vehicles, buildings, trailers etc.
Another alternative is the garmin inreach explorer. while it isn't a sat phone it is a 2 way text messaging device that uses the irridium sat's. you can send a text to any phone that accepts text messages, and email to email addresses and it comes with search and rescue standard.
It's what we have used this last year all over the northwest and in our trip around south america, and cape horn. reception everywhere. and along with it you can have it send tracking so those on your list can see exactly where you are. And you have 3 text messages you can preprogram for content and address and another 20 you can program and send to whomever. link with a bluetooth phone and we use phone speech to text to send messages. Anyone you send a message to can respond back as well.
yes, more spendy than a few weeks rental, but if you travel a lot it is a nice device where there is no cell service.
Thank you! Great information!
