Iridium
9555 satellite phone
“It won’t
play games, take pictures, or play MP3s. What it will do is work –
everywhere.”
At least, that’s what the poster on Mail-a-Sail’s stand said,
advertising the
new Iridium 9555 satellite telephone.
At the risk
of sounding like a cynic, I haven’t seen many satellite phones that do
play
MP3s or take pictures: those are very much the preserve of ordinary,
land-based
mobile phones. But perhaps that’s the point: apart from its size –
which is
comparable with a VHF radio, or with a mobile phone of ten years ago –
the
Iridium 9555 looks so astonishingly ordinary that you’d half expect to
find
Snake or Tetris on its menu.
Pricing,
unfortunately, is not yet quite so ordinary, but it’s heading in the
right
direction: Mail A Sail is offering the hand-held phone for
£1321.35 or a
bulkhead-mounted version with an external antenna for £1953.85.
Airtime and
line-rental charges vary, but start at
$1.50 per minute and $39 per month, and get cheaper the more you buy.