Satellite Phones

[trest1]

Australian boat currently travelling across the pacific, just purchased, original sat phone (2 years old) linked to old owners and pre paid. At the moment still some credits. Are there any preferred satellite providers for Inmarsat? I haven't had much help from one company who had the original contract, no email to boat to discuss with my husband and fairly bad reception when we do get through breaks down and conversation hard to gauge so any help would be appreciated.
Can we swop the sim to a different account?
Thank you

[44'cruisingcat]

Conversation on Inmarsat can be a bit stilted, as they use geostationary sattellites, which are at very high altitudes. IIRC they're something like 22,000 km up. So the signals have to travel a LONG way, which can mean a couple of seconds delay between you saying something, and the other person hearing it.

Other than that though, we had good success with our Isatphone pro. We use ASTA Welcome to Applied Satellite Technology Australia | ASTA - Applied Satellite Technology Australia but to be honest, I doubt there would be any difference in service between providers - they all have to use the same Inmarsat sattellites.

[trest1]

Thank you so much I appreciate any information. You have been very helpful

[44'cruisingcat]

No worries, happy to help. Hope the phone works as well for you as ours did for us.

There are some handy programs you can download free (not via the satphone though!) which let you download Grib files and send short emails quite cheaply.

We used Onsatmail Onsatmail.com

And viewed the gribs on Open CPN.

Takes a bit of setting up, but once going ours worked really well.