Iridium – Away we GO!
by Christine Kling
This week we finally fired up our new Iridium GO in preparation for leaving to sail down to Fiji. Already, I love the Go.
Previously, when we sailed from Fiji to the Marshall Islands in January 2014, Wayne used his satellite phone to send emails and to post his blog every night. It was a connection (when I had none) but it was slow and it took umpteen tries to get connected. It was like the worst memories you might have of the days when we used telephone modems and just getting a connection was something worthy of a celebration. We hadn’t had time to set me up on the sat phone, and as a tech geek myself, I felt a bit left out of the communications party, slow though it was. So, I decided to take the matter under my own control, and I bought myself the Iridium Go.
So how is this different from having a satellite phone to use as a modem? Is it faster? First off, it’s important to note that the connecting speed is no different. It is still painfully slow. And depending on the situation with the satellites overhead, it is often not even possible. The HUGE difference is that with the Iridium Go, users can select a plan that offers unlimited data for $125.00/month.
Yeah, I know, that sounds steep, but the thing is Iridium satellite phone data minutes are not cheap. When you are trying to connect but the connection fails and you have to start over, they charge you for every single minute during the attempt. It doesn’t matter that you are simply trying to connect. On our way from Fiji to Majuro, Wayne went through several hundred dollars worth of sat phone data minutes just sending out his blogs. And sat phone minutes expire. Iridium has this really dastardly scheme whereby if you don’t want your minutes to expire, you have to buy another huge package of like 500 minutes. Now with the Go there is no more worry about expiring minutes.
And with the unlimited data, the plan includes five voice call minutes. I imagine we will keep those in reserve in case of emergency and then on the last day of the month before they expire, we’ll call someone to say hello.
One other really important difference with the Iridium GO is there is no contract. If you arrive someplace and sit for several months, you can deactivate the account. It will cost $50.00 to reconnect, but that’s better than continuing to pay $125/month when you don’t need the service.
So, now I hope to be able to post to the blog each week we are at sea by email. I went into the back end of our WordPress blog and set it up to allow me to send my blog to a certain email address and it is supposed to automatically get posted.
We were supposed to leave yesterday afternoon, but the engine wouldn’t start. We spent last night here at Eneko and so this morning I do still have Internet. However, I am going to post this via email anyway. I hope it works.
The engine is now running, the instruments are on and we are ready to drop the mooring. Off to Fiji!
May 2, 2015 local time is 8:30 a.m.
Fair winds!
Christine
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