PassageMaker - March 2011

“Iridium is working very well, but it is expensive.
The price point is definitely a big challenge for Iridium.
They’re still selling very well, despite everything,”
Fierstone says. “But the Inmarsat phone definitely
needs to be in a docking station when you’re on a
boat, because it just doesn’t work that well when you’re
moving around, and unlike the Iridium phone, it is quite
fragile and can be easily damaged. But the real downside
is that it can’t do data yet. [Data is] very important for
boaters...that’s a big handicap.”
Both the Frost & Sullivan report and Inmarsat’s own
literature stress the need to point the IsatPhone antenna
at the distant GEO satellite to make a call and to keep
it aligned to complete the call. This might not be the
easiest thing to do on a moving platform, particularly if
you combine forward motion with the pitching and
rolling of an underway boat. At anchor, that might not
be a problem; the caller can set the IsatPhone down on a
flat surface with a view of the southern sky and talk over
a Bluetooth headset. As Fierstone suggests, another option
is a docking station, but that would add considerably to
the cost.

ELECTRONICS

All that having been said, when I tested an IsatPhone in northern Florida, I had no problem completing several calls while walking around my backyard. Once the data service is working, it will probably make a fine tool for communicating while laying over at remote anchorages, but perhaps not a first choice for a ditch bag.

TERRESTAR GENUS

The newest player in the satellite communications market is a company called TerreStar, which makes a hybrid device called GENUS, a smartphone that doubles as a satphone. GENUS costs $799 and must be activated for voice and data through the AT&T network. To get satellite connectivity on top of AT&T cell service, you pay TerreStar $25 a month, plus 65 cents a minute for satellite calls and $5 a megabyte for data.

Those service prices compare very favorably to those of other satellite providers, but GENUS has a significant drawback in that its advertised footprint extends only 200 miles off the U.S. coastline, although that includes Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Plus, anyone

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