New Bus Phone Option Next Year with coverage everywhere...

[pickpaul]

I just read an article about a new US Satellite/Cell Phone option that is launching next year. I thought it may be of particular interest to fulltimers. Basically, it will work on the regular ATT network but when there is no signal it will use the new satellite. The article covers the pros/cons well so I won't repeat...

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/phones/2009-04-09-satellite-phones_N.htm

Cheers, Paul.

[Sean]

Sorry to be the eternal pessimist here, but I don't believe it.

Bear in mind that I've been an Iridium and Globalstar customer, and I've used Inmarsat.  I am also a certified satcom installer and I routinely bring up satellite systems all over the country.

These technologies are really unproven;  getting a signal to work over 23,000 miles with a low-gain omnidirectional antenna is dicey at best, and I don't think subscribers (if they ever get any) will be satisfied with that QOS, and certainly not enough to pony up the bucks.

Remember, Iridium and Globalstar birds are in low or medium orbits -- the birds are a lot closer to the handsets.  And even then, quality is a huge problem, and the service is considered a "last resort" even by those of us who depend on it with our lives.

Let's see if either of these companies ever gets a bird in the sky, and then, if they do, we can see just how big an antenna it's going to take to make it useful (my guess, BTW, is at least a 12" whip or plate).

JMO, etc. etc.

-Sean
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com

[belfert]

The service has got to be spendy if they are roaming on AT&T all the time when cell service is available.

A major reason Verizon Wireless bought Alltel was because Verizon was sending tons of money to Alltel for roaming fees for Verizon customers with nationwide plans.

[bobofthenorth]

What Sean said.  I'll believe it when I see it - or more accurately, I'll believe it after I've seen it work for about 2 years.  I was a Globalstar subscriber and it was virtually worthless despite the huge subscription, hardware and airtime costs.  You can't use it indoors, so if somebody calls you while you are indoors you don't get the call.  You need to be outdoors and not just outside but outside with a clear shot to the southern sky to have any hope of a connection.  I never did get the tethered modem on Globalstar to work with any reliability, that's maybe less of an issue now but it still is a problem.  If I was really concerned about continuous phone access now I'd be looking at a VOIP system over a high end data plan on a satellite system.  You would still have the restriction of having to see the southern sky but there are workarounds that will give you a connection while you are indoors.

[pickpaul]

For the record, I'm skeptical too but thought it was interesting. If they have a June launch schedule then I'm assuming the bird is built with at least a deposit on the launch. Specifically I was thinking about this setup with an external roof antenna on the bus.

Sean, have you attempted to use skype on your satellite internet connection. I'm assuming there would be a lag but if nothing else, couldn't you use it to check your voicemail while in a non cell area?

Cheers, Paul.

[bobofthenorth]

Sean, have you attempted to use skype on your satellite internet connection. I'm assuming there would be a lag but if nothing else, couldn't you use it to check your voicemail while in a non cell area?

I'm not Sean but I'll answer anyway.  We're on the Hughes household plan and it is very unusual for Skype to be reliable enough to check voicemail.  I can't generate the DTMF tones reliably enough to enter my voicemail system.  Once in a while, late in the evening maybe.  But certainly not reliably.  There are satellite service packages though that are reliable enough for VOIP, I'm just not willing to pay for them.

[Sean]

A fixed, roof-mount antenna will probably be the way to go with this new satellite service, just as it it the way to go right now with Iridium (I no longer use or recommend GlobalStar, as their birds are failing).  It's also the way to go with traditional cellular, including 3g data service, if you travel through marginal signal areas.

I do have and use Skype, and it's great for checking voicemail when we are out of cell range.

I can use it, with some difficulty, to have a live conversation.  The delay is really bad, but if the party on the other end can be made to understand this, you can have a somewhat decent conversation by saying "over" every time you finish speaking, just like in the early days of radio.  Then you just have to wait patiently for a full one to two seconds (which, in terms of phone silence, is an eternity) before you hear what the other party has to say.

Also, because my consumer-grade service is asymmetric (my download bandwidth is 5-8 times my upload bandwidth), sometimes my part of the conversation gets "clipped" and I have to repeat myself.  I almost never have problems with the audio in the other (incoming) direction.

There are Hughesnet plans, for a lot more money and requiring a larger dish, that are optimized for VOIP for the folks who really need it -- quality on that service is virtually indistinguishable from a land line phone.

If you ever spoke with me while I was on a Red Cross assignment, then you know what really good VOIP (Cisco) over a really good satellite (IntelSat) connection sounds like.  We run a whole room full of phones over a single 1.2 meter VSAT.

-Sean
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com

[Sean]

...  We're on the Hughes household plan and it is very unusual for Skype to be reliable enough to check voicemail.  I can't generate the DTMF tones reliably enough to enter my voicemail system. ...

Let me say a few more words about this...

One of the problems with Skype (IMHO) is that the DTMF tones generated by the software "dial pad" are fixed-length.  On my current Sprint voice mail, I have no trouble whatsoever getting into voice mail and navigating around.  However, back when I had Verizon, I struggled mightily to retrieve messages over Skype.

Verizon's voice mail system is tuned to want just a hair longer tone than the Skype dial pad will generate.  Other voice mail systems likely have the same problem, as do (I have discovered) may automated voice response systems such as those for telephone banking.

[Technical mumbo-jumbo follows.]

On my last computer, a Sony with some sound system I no longer remember, I was able to get around this by downloading a third-party DTMF application that sounds the tone for as long as the key is "pressed," and setting up the computer's audio mixer such that the output of that application also went to the microphone input.  In other words, I bypassed Skype's dial pad, and used a different dial pad that generated longer tones.

My current computer, a Gateway with a Sigmatel sound system, does not have the audio mixer feature.  So I can't do it that way.  When I was still on Verizon with this setup, I had to hold my headset's microphone up to a speaker and generate external tones, and that worked "sometimes."

Lots of discussion on this particular limitation of Skype on various forums; many have been asking Skype for a tone-while-pressed keypad feature for a long time.

So, Bob, you might look to see if your computer has an audio mixer that will allow you to generate the tones external to Skype.  I don't really think your problem is the Skype transmit audio quality itself.  FWIW.

-Sean
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com

[bobofthenorth]

We're contributing to significant thread drift but I think you are absolutely right Sean - the problem is that Skype doesn't generate a long enough tone for what my POS phone provider (Sasktel) wants.  Most of the time it doesn't matter and we have recently added a Wilson amp and external antenna which should further reduce the times when it is a problem.  Maybe by the time it is a problem again Skype will have come up with a solution.  Or maybe we'll switch to Telus when we change our mailing address.