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It's like pre-paid mobile phone. I pay for a 4 month validity 100 unit card that costs 185 US$ or to me 150 euro from the French service provider e-sat. The units buy either telephone time or data transfer, at 1.85 US$/1.5 euro a unit.
On the tariff that I am paying (different service providers have different tariffs).
Voice to another BGAN terminal 0.5 units/min = 0.95 US$/0.75 euro /min
Voice to fixed/cell phone 0.7 units/min = 1.3 US$/1.05 euro/min
SMS per message = 0.25 units = 0.46 US$/0.375 euro
Data per MB = 4.75 units/MB = 8.79 US$/7.125 euro/MB.
Motto:- Don't surf the web with it.
For comparison, my mobile phone service provider's rates are:
Voice to fixed/cell phone 0.4876 euro/min to 1.6529/min depending on destination and data at 3 euro/MB. However, these are not on a pay-as-you-go basis but a subscription. And I get my data at 1.5 euro/MB on a business mobile subscription.
So calling Australia from Norway (say) is cheaper with Inmarsat than with a mobile phone rate for me, (except I use Rebtel) but data is over four times the price.
I am still looking at alternatives to reduce rates and particularly ways to reduce data transfer.
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