I hate cell phones because they rarely work well for me and so I
rarely use them However, sometimes they are useful but then I am in a
place where they do not work (say 10 miles out to sea).
So, considering how little I use a cell phone and that I still pay
roughly $40/month, why not buy a satellite phone that gives me real
coverage. A reconditioned Motorola Iridium phone costs $695 and then
it costs roughly $1.99/minute ( I will not talk on any cell phone for
more than a minute).
A Globalstar phone is about $400 and they have various plans for about
$30/month with small amounts of free time (about an hour/month).
I never text or take pics with a phone so just the basics is good for
me.
Thoughts?

Frogwatch wrote:
I hate cell phones because they rarely work well for me and so I
rarely use them However, sometimes they are useful but then I am in a
place where they do not work (say 10 miles out to sea).
So, considering how little I use a cell phone and that I still pay
roughly $40/month, why not buy a satellite phone that gives me real
coverage. A reconditioned Motorola Iridium phone costs $695 and then
it costs roughly $1.99/minute ( I will not talk on any cell phone for
more than a minute).
A Globalstar phone is about $400 and they have various plans for about
$30/month with small amounts of free time (about an hour/month).
I never text or take pics with a phone so just the basics is good for
me.
Thoughts?


Seriously, since you seem to have never-ending maintenance problems with
your stuff, why not just depend on your cell and a VHF radio with a
mast-mounted antenna? You just know the sat phone will be teats-up when
you need it, probably because you'll stash it in the bilge.

"Frogwatch" wrote in message
...
I hate cell phones because they rarely work well for me and so I
rarely use them However, sometimes they are useful but then I am in
a
place where they do not work (say 10 miles out to sea).
So, considering how little I use a cell phone and that I still pay
roughly $40/month, why not buy a satellite phone that gives me real
coverage. A reconditioned Motorola Iridium phone costs $695 and
then
it costs roughly $1.99/minute ( I will not talk on any cell phone
for
more than a minute).
A Globalstar phone is about $400 and they have various plans for
about
$30/month with small amounts of free time (about an hour/month).
I never text or take pics with a phone so just the basics is good
for
me.
Thoughts?

get a pay as you go phone. If you don't use it much and select the
optimum carrier you can get by for under 10 dollars per month.

Of course that doesn't help in the middle of nowhere or far out to
sea.

On Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:09:12 -0800 (PST), Frogwatch
wrote:

I hate cell phones because they rarely work well for me and so I
rarely use them However, sometimes they are useful but then I am in a
place where they do not work (say 10 miles out to sea).
So, considering how little I use a cell phone and that I still pay
roughly $40/month, why not buy a satellite phone that gives me real
coverage. A reconditioned Motorola Iridium phone costs $695 and then
it costs roughly $1.99/minute ( I will not talk on any cell phone for
more than a minute).
A Globalstar phone is about $400 and they have various plans for about
$30/month with small amounts of free time (about an hour/month).
I never text or take pics with a phone so just the basics is good for
me.
Thoughts?

Globalstar gets very poor user reports compared to Iridium, lots of
connection problems and dropped calls so I ruled it out. If you buy
large blocks of minutes, Iridium can be less that $1/minute but if you
are only concerned with emergencies and occasional use it doesn't
really matter that much.

In article 78463242-63a8-4a3f-9333-aa92ae4d2b38
@j5g2000yqm.googlegroups.com, says...

I hate cell phones because they rarely work well for me and so I
rarely use them However, sometimes they are useful but then I am in a
place where they do not work (say 10 miles out to sea).
So, considering how little I use a cell phone and that I still pay
roughly $40/month, why not buy a satellite phone that gives me real
coverage. A reconditioned Motorola Iridium phone costs $695 and then
it costs roughly $1.99/minute ( I will not talk on any cell phone for
more than a minute).
A Globalstar phone is about $400 and they have various plans for about
$30/month with small amounts of free time (about an hour/month).
I never text or take pics with a phone so just the basics is good for
me.
Thoughts?

Well, folks pay 2-600 for IPhones and such too so the price is not out
of line. If you are truly going to only use it say 20-30 bucks a month
max, you would not spend more on it monthly than a regular cellular
plan, except that CP would probably be more or less unlimited... But if
you don't need unlimited, and you do seem to be out on a boat a lot, I
would say, get the Sat Phone.

Scotty