Back to the 90s

It is here, it arrived today. Our satellite phone of course. This is the latest version of the Iridium satellite phone, it is a basic phone that supports SMS and email. It even has a USB port on it and yet it looks like something from the early 90s. In fact, this satellite phone makes my first ever mobile phone look modern and lightweight! It is supposed to be very reliable, with over a 99% connection success rate and works anywhere where you can see the sky.



We were never actually planning on getting a satellite phone, but a person who I don't think will mind being named and shamed (Milan!!!) reminded me incessantly of the benefits of a satellite phone. I'm sure he should be an insurance salesman, the last email from him was titled 'There is still time...'. Well many people are very grateful that he persuaded us into getting this.

It is of course a no brainer to take one of these along on the rally as we are completely without any support vehicles and are heading into the unknown. We've tried out the phone today and it works, we can make and receive calls. We're not planning on keeping the phone on very often when on the rally, but we will occasionally power it on when we are covering large distances without mobile phone coverage.