Originally Posted by
FastSRT8
So... the next obvious question is... has anyone with a personal satellite phone try and successfully make a call while in flight on a commercial jet?
Yes,
with Iridium calling from an aircraft cabin works perfectly ok, especially with the standard car cable antenna put close to the window (although I didn't manage to put it on the roof, like in my car
)
My advice on this whole question:
rent the sat phone (from an online expediter; or if you have a shop nearby) according to your needs.
Or if you really, really want to buy one,
buy Iridium.
I own a Thuraya dual sat phone, meaning I can call GSM and satellite with my same everyday SIM card. Perfect as a safety backup, especially in Africa, Asia, Europe, but not in the Americas and Atlantic (cruise ships!), and sat calls are expensive! I successfully made calls from East Siberia and even Japan pointing the antenna almost horizontally towards the satellite above Somalia.
(There's an interesting sat sleeve for the iPhone)
I often travel to remote places with a friend who owns an Iridium. When he buys a bigger pre-paid card, the cost per call is so low that we use his Iridium for all outgoing calls all the time. Very convenient. But cards expire quickly. And call parties don't see the number they know from you.
Just now, I was at the North Pole (
Trip Report here). Together with Antarctica, these are the two areas where
only Iridium works. So I rented one. Paid around US$ 100 for 1 week, including a lot of calls - to tell people where I just was
.