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Laura Thieme

Bizresearch President – 10 years - 2007

Fisher College of Business Lecturer on Search Marketing

OSU Russian Studies Grad – 1993

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5th December 2007

Iridium Satellite Phone Challenges for Antarctica 1 reply

I’m a little nervous that I haven’t left the United States yet, and I have as of yet been unable to get my Iridium satellite phone to work.

Iridium Satellite Phones - the challenge of using bulky satellite phones and cables to blog live from Antarctica.

Satelline Phone Rental Vendors: 
Global Information Technology Services - Iridium Satellite 9505A,
All Road Communications (my vendor) - Iridium’s Satellite 9505A Package - Iridium Phone Specifications

I tried connecting with Iridium satellite service from Worthington, Ohio.  One of the biggest challenges with connecting to the Web via satellite, if you’re new to this like me, is that you must have an open air connection.  It’s not like a cell phone, that it works inside most of the time.  Forget trying to have a phone call on B deck, right?  Thank God Abercrombie & Kent (A&K) upgraded me to an A deck (for a fee of around $1,000 or so) with a picture window. 

My vendor, All Road Communications, says that I need open air communication, and thus sent me a cone-shaped antenna to “stick outside my window”.  Can you see that? Visually, I can’t.  I just can’t see the connection, literally.  It’s not like I’m going to secure a satellite cable connection outside my ship’s picture window without a little help from A&K’s cruiseship technical crew.  I hope they’ll be able to offer some help with this, or insight.

I have tried connecting from my home in Columbus, by a sliding glass door - no signal there either.  Talking to others who have some form of GPS system, like a tom tom - they say I need to be outside in the open air, or in a car-like setting, where it’s affixed to a window.  At this point, my cone-shaped antenna doesn’t easily connect to my window, regardless of where I’m at.  I also imagine it’s only going to be more difficult to do this wherever I’m at on a ship.

I’m in Chicago right now, which is very urban - to the point of this post on when Iridium satellite works best.  There are still limitations — service doesn’t always work in dense, skyscraper-filled urban areas or below tree canopies — but users can regain service if they move to areas where they can get direct sightlines to the sky (ComputerWorld).   This is excellent feedback, because in all cases above I’ve been surrounded by offices or by trees.  There are lots of trees in Worthington and near my house.

To make things more challenging - let me show you the cords associated with this, after I post them to Flickr.  It’s not like you can walk around with this solution in your purse or backpack.  The cable is worse than your home cable wire. 

However, hopefully, in open air seas, this will be easier - no buildings to offset satellite communication access, just weather.

If you want to send me a text message, you can do that here:  Iridium Text Message - I keep getting a server error when I try it - let me know if you try - you can post comments to this post, as well as post a text message

Here’s my satellite phone (don’t worry - they advertise free incoming sms messages):

8816-4146-6435

You can also try www.iridium.com - see text link at the top?  Send text message, 160 character limit.  This worked - my secretary also had an issue with sending through All Road’s website - so opt for Iridium’s site - plus it’s a greater character limit (by 20 whopping characters).

Okay, I have to prepare for sessions and do some administrative stuff now.  Ciao for now!

One Response to “Iridium Satellite Phone Challenges for Antarctica”

  1. Iridium Satellite Phone Challenges says:
    December 5th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    […] Original post by Global Warming, Environmental Awareness, Effects of Global Warming: LauraThieme.com […]

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