Dear Thomas: Ok, i'd be happy to talk about Iridium. I spent a fair amount of time at their "building" and outside in their court yard/patio area during the two days I was at Telecom 99 trying their various phone flavors. I arrived hoping the first years teething problems were behind them and with their newly announced smaller 2nd generation phone i was, with credit card in hand, ready to buy.
Bottom line: It's not a pretty sight.
I placed multiple calls to the same party in California on their three portable phones: the original Motorola 9500, the new Motorola 9505 and the Kyosera GSM portable bolted/attach-on to the Sat Pack.
Every call, except one on the new 9505 had voice quality problems or drops. The person at the other end of the phone said it sounded like I was "talking through my nose". On my ends, the voice was "choppy" and had cut outs. The only one call that did not have this problem came from the new 9505 phone -- but that was only one call on the 9505 phone. This one call the person at the other end said it sounded like I was right in the same room with her, however, my end sounded like crap -- and got so bad, i handed the phone over to one of the Motorola engineers. He said it sounded just "fine" and handed the phone back to me after about a minute (same call still connected) -- at which time i expected to hear a cleared up call (thinking there must have been a hand off or something) but came back to the same crap quality. Other calls on the 9505, like with the original 9500 and Kyocera phone had similar voice quality and/or drop problems.
I would rate the Iridium service on the bottom of the list and would buy a Globalstar phone anyday of the week, even with the difficulities i had with it, over an Iridium phone.
A not-unusual conversation to hear while around the Globalstar outside gatherings was someone from some other country in a dialog with a Globalstar person saying they were the Inmarsat or GSM agent and had been very disappointed with Iridium and would like to try Globalstar.
This would seem to be corroborated to me by the fact that Sprint PCS in the US never ignited Iridium service. My GSM carrier here in Prague has both Mini-M Inmarsat and Iridium phones, but only makes an effort to advertise or sell Mini-M. My best guess is there is a lot more than just financial and marketing difficulties at issue with Iridium.
Best regards,
Geoff |
