Five things you need to know about sat phones

When travelling in the Aussie bush it’s common to see your mobile phone displaying ‘No Service’.

That means not only will you be unable to surf the net, or make or receive phone calls or texts, you won’t be able to make an SOS call.

A mobile phone simply will not connect, in many parts of Australia, no matter how much you wave it around your head.

However, a satellite phone can offer you the back-up you hope you’ll never need when travelling many parts of Australia.

With a sat phone, you’ll have coverage wherever you are. Not only can you keep in touch with loved ones back home when stuck without mobile reception, but a sat phone can literally be a life-saver when out in the bush.

It might simply be a matter of calling for mechanical help if you break down – or a medical emergency, where the sat phone could literally be a way of helping to save someone’s life.

Here are five things you need to consider when buying, renting or just using a satellite phone…

While a UHF radio or a personal beacon have their place for remote comms, neither have the versatility of a sat phone.

UHF has a range limitation while a personal distress beacon is only suitable for an emergency. This doesn’t help if all you want to do is call a tow truck because you’ve broken down in a cellular dead zone.

A satellite phone doesn’t use the Telstra/Optus or Vodafone ground-based phone towers, but relies on line-of-sight to satellites orbiting earth. A sat phone can make and receive calls or text messages and transfer data via a satellite connection. 

The three key Australian providers of satellite phones, airtime or prepaid plans are Iridium, Inmarsat and Thuraya, and each use their own set of satellites.

Sat phones used to cost as much as a good used car and usage charges were also high, but prices have come down significantly for the hardware and some airtime usage fees are now reasonable.

Depending on where you plan to travel and your budget, there are a few sat phone options.

Provided you are planning to travel and potentially use a sat phone mostly in the Red Centre or Western Australia, a good budget option is the Thuraya range of sat phones.

These use a geostationary group of satellites that offer coverage for about three-quarters of the earth’s surface. What that means for Australian coverage is that this phone won’t work so well in south-eastern areas.

If you drew a line on the map from Brisbane to Adelaide, this phone does give very good coverage west or north of that line. That works for many travellers, because the south-east is where most have good cellular reception anyway.

However, for full Australian coverage you’re better off getting an Inmarsat or Iridium sat phone.

Inmarsat is UK-based and uses four satellites for global coverage. It’s well known for marine applications and every ship around the world uses Inmarsat to communicate via voice and data. There are plenty of land applications of the Inmarsat sat phones as well.

Perhaps the Roll-Royce of sat phones, Iridium was the original satellite company that has a well-established satellite coverage including 66 new satellites.

This is the most expensive option and perhaps not the most economical choice for a casual user, but no doubt the best.

The entry-level Thuraya XT-LITE phone (from around $850) is a good budget option for occasional use.

The XT-LITE has 80 hours of standby time and up to six hours talk time and is small enough to put in your pocket. It has a built-in GPS so you can send your position and message to up to four mobiles as an SMS.

The Thuraya XT-PRO is the next level up from the XT-LITE (from about $1500), and offers nice-to-have extra features such as a bigger lithium battery offering talk time of up to nine hours and up to 100 hours standby, PC compatibility, USB data cable, privacy earpiece and mic.

Not only that, but the XT-PRO is water-resistant, dust-resistant and shock-proof plus comes with a micro USB charger. With the Thuraya XT-PRO you can also use a satellite data connection to send and receive emails or browse the web with a connected laptop or PC.

The Inmarsat IsatPhone 2 (from about $1100) is rugged, user-friendly and has up to eight hours of talk time and 160 hours’ standby time. It comes with a 240V charger and car charger.

The main benefits are that Inmarsat does both a post-paid airtime plan and the most flexible prepaid card on the market. So, if you are just a casual user you can top up whenever it suits you without paying expensive annual fees.

Arguably the most trusted brand in the sat phone space is Iridium, where you can buy the Iridium 9555 from about $1700. The 9555 has up to 30 hours’ standby time, four hours’ talk time and two-way SMS and short email capability.

If you don’t want a dedicated sat phone, Iridium and Thuraya each make a unit which works like a hotspot or a SatSleeve for your smartphone. This option will set you back from about $850.

For example, the Iridium GO! is Iridium’s most compact device with voice and data that up to five units can connect to at once. Rugged and portable, the Iridium Go! Wi-Fi satellite hotspot allows communication anywhere on the planet.

Just like a mobile phone, with a sat phone you need to pay for access to communicate with it. They are generally a lot more expensive than a mobile phone, but then again, they provide communications where a mobile simply will not.

The cheapest is with Thuraya, from about $22 a month. There’s a $44 activation fee, $22 monthly access fee and calls are 99 cents per 30 seconds to landline or mobiles. SMS messages are $1.10, while data calls are $1.25.

Inmarsat pre-paid airtime plans are about $69 a month (as a credit extension on existing credit on a handset) and initial SIM card is $33. Iridium prepaid airtime plans are priced from $229 for 75 minutes of airtime over a one-month period.

Iridium post-paid (which benefits those who expect to receive calls to the sat phone) includes a $44 activation fee, $50 monthly access fee, a flag-fall charge of 50 cents and about $1 per 30 seconds voice call to a mobile phone.

You can reduce costs on some plans by using free services available. For example, SMS messages from mobiles to your sat phone won’t cost you anything on Iridium pre-paid plans, while Inmarsat won’t charge for SMS to the sat phone where the call is made via the satellitephonedirect.com.au website.

Make sure you check when buying on some commercial retail sites to see that the sat phone is for use in Australia – or you will have problems.

If the sat phone doesn’t allow for local dialling or you are locked into an airtime provider that charges a lot more for using the phone, a cheap online sat phone can turn out to be very expensive.

Also be aware that there are some pitfalls to buying a unit that you can pair with your smartphone (that is, one that works as a hotspot or SatSleeve).

These units can end up being expensive to use due to the download speed being the same as the sat phone, as they are using the same network. You will need to work out how to get the most out of the unit without it costing you a fortune, especially if using it for emails and photos and so on.

If you’re thinking about a sat phone for just a couple trips, be aware that sat phones are very different to mobile phones in terms of their used value. Often, you will get back at least half your purchase price when you decide to sell your sat phone.

For more details on plan and call pricing, a good place to check out is satellitephonesdirect.com.au.

You can also download the 'Complete Guide to Satellite Phones'.