Learn me about Sat phones
 

...anyone have one? Rent only? Lotsa places I go cell coverage doesn't reach.

Rennlist GT3 Forum perhaps? :D

I thought Iridium went belly-up.

I bought some Iridium handsets for my company's drilling operations well north of the Arctic Circle. Cost about CAD$ 1500, monthly standby charge is about $40 and a little over a buck a minute to make a call to a landline.

We chose Iridium because the probability of connecting on the first call was over 95%, the Globalstar system was said to be much, much less reliable, and to have much bigger / more frequent "dead spots", ie locations where service is at least temporarily unavailable. If you are likely to need the phone inside a vehicle or building, I'd recommend an external antenna (mag mount are available).

Iridium has proven to be quite reliable, although long calls (20+ minutes) sometimes drop if there's no satellite coming into range to take the handoff. The satellites are in constant motion as they are in low earth orbit. They hand off your calls to one another as they move out of range, similar to how a cellular phone network hands off to different towers when you're driving around in your car. If you drive into a zone that is out of cell range, you'll lose the signal until you get close to another tower. Same idea except it's the satellites that are moving.

I understand US military is using Iridium system for some of its comms. Also for taking out Russian military satellites by colliding with them...

Thx BC...I'd use them outdoors, hunting and fishing offshore.

The company that I left a year ago used lots of Iridium phones. We had some Globalstars too, but they were crap and just hadn't been traded out for Iridiums yet. I can't tell you anything about the cost. My company provided them for oil rigs all over the gulf of Mexico and oil and shipping companies all over the world (south america, north sea, africa, indonesia, etc....)