Re: Slightly OT -- Iridium

i just rented an iridium last month for a transatlantic sailing trip.
in addition to making phone calls, i used the data service to download
weather graphics and text. basically, it worked pretty well.

you can make a data call to the dial-up number of any isp, including
your own. but, if you connect through iridium, the claim is that there
is some sort of compression that effectively gives you as high as 9.6
kbps. i never really understood whether or not it was really working,
but that is what i did. my downloads were occasionally as high as 4.8
kbps, but i was mostly downloading graphics, which may not be as
amenable to compression as text.

to complicate it further, i was downloading the weather graphics from
a commercial provider, that takes noaa graphics and compresses them
specifically for transmission over satellite phones. so, they were
sort of pre-compressed, before they ever went through the iridium
dial-up system. i purchased the weather graphics from OCENS
www.ocens.com.

probably someone can explain the compression issue better.

on the whole, the system worked very well. there were a few times
that the ocens system wouldn't accept a connection, but if i tried
again a while later i could usually connect. the motorolla 9505
phone worked very well - i never had any trouble making either voice
or data calls. getting up-to-date noaa graphics, including satellite
photos in the middle of the atlantic was great. a typical call for
3 compressed graphics lasted 4-6 minutes at $1.75 minute. satellite
images took longer than other images - maybe 3-4 minutes each.

i should mention that i originally tried using a motorolla 9500 phone,
and i was never able to establish a data connection. the company i rented
it from said that the problem was with my pc (a basic dell latitude/win2k
pro), but i was told by someone else, that not all 9500 phones have the
right firmware to make data calls.

jeff f

Oldbie wrote:
> "Donkey Agony" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > After this conversation, I went and looked at the Iridium pages, and at
> > their data speeds.  2.4kbps.  Man, that's rockin'.  :)
>
>
> I guess that's why it's only a "short burst", huh?