Iridium Go - is it really a good deal?

[Onemoreproject]

I am spending the next 3 months cruising Mexico. I have to communicate with clients via email often and occasionally by voice to clients and employees.
I have an SSB / Pactor set up which I can use for emails, but am trying to choose between Iridium Go or Garmin IN-Reach. What is the voice quality like on the Go? If I got the Garmin, I know I would be limited to text (fine with employees) and making client calls when I had cell sites.

I am wondering which is a better communication solution?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Onemoreproject

I am spending the next 3 months cruising Mexico. I have to communicate with clients via email often and occasionally by voice to clients and employees.
I have an SSB / Pactor set up which I can use for emails, but am trying to choose between Iridium Go or Garmin IN-Reach. What is the voice quality like on the Go? If I got the Garmin, I know I would be limited to text (fine with employees) and making client calls when I had cell sites.

I am wondering which is a better communication solution?

If you're sailing along the coast, you will probably have cell coverage more or less seamlessly, so you might not need anything else.


The Go is excellent for text emails and limited attachments (small spreadsheets for example, or small Word documents), and this is quite a bit more functionality than SMS's via In-Reach. But it will cost you $139 a month vs. whatever the In-Reach costs. Voice calls work pretty well.



If it's a business expense, then it might make sense to spend $400 or whatever (adding cost of equipment and activation), to be sure to be reachable at all times, even if you have cell coverage most of the time. Depends on how flexible your business is, to your being out of touch.


I also have SSB and Pactor, and Go is an order of magnitude easier for getting and receiving emails quickly and often. Vastly less faffing, no propagation issues. It's a good tool, but you have to take into account extremely narrow bandwidth -- like a 2400 baud modem.

[Training Wheels]

We have found mainland Mexico to have very good cell coverage. Baja, not so much......

[akopac]

Originally Posted by Paul L

There are a lot of good arguments for using Sat based comms, but your cost argument isn't one of them. A pactor 4 modem is usd$1650. At $135 a month for the Go you hit that amount in 12 months and the fees keep going.

I’ve never had a problem doing winlink. Sailing nets weather fax with my radio and modem. I have talked to quit a few people who are now starting to use sound cards and winlink express. Ardop as well. It just works for me

[Kenomac]

People generally use the Iridium go just for a month or so at at time while on passage or when internet won’t be available. I haven’t heard of anyone with a continuous subscription;. We only needed to pay for the one month it was in use, so our total data cost for 2019 was $139.

I’ll be selling ours soon if anyone is interested.

[TheOffice]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

People generally use the Iridium go just for a month or so at at time while on passage or when internet won’t be available. I haven’t heard of anyone with a continuous subscription;. We only needed to pay for the one month it was in use, so our total data cost for 2019 was $139.

I’ll be selling ours soon if anyone is interested.

I’m interested.
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