Iridium Satellite Phones - From Disaster To Success

By Author: Jesse Whitehead
Total Articles: 130
Comment this article

Before the September 11th World Trade Center disaster, many people considered Iridium satellite phones to be absolutely useless contraptions. Although satellite (sat) phones had been pitched to the international globetrotter as having an "always available" signal, they were generally unreliable and too expensive for most travelers.

They became infamous for never being able to get a signal. This was because not all of the satellites were in service at the time, causing great gaps in coverage. It is said that at one time, the developer of the system was as at a complete loss as to what to do with the Iridium satellites that were in orbit to service this market. At one stage, there was talk of allowing the satellites to just "fall out of the sky" and incinerate on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere if they could not find someone to take over this faltering and incredibly expensive system.

This all changed after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On that disastrous day, rescuers could not use land line phones and most cell phones due to the overwhelming of the system by anxious people ...
... trying to make calls. This made an already terrible event even worse for both rescuers and victims alike.

Fortunately, there was another option that was not affected by the disaster--the Iridium satellite phone network. These phones worked nearly flawlessly, providing much needed connections for emergency workers, reporters, and others who needed to make important calls. In addition to the New York and Washington D.C. sites, Iridium phones were used by emergency workers at the crash site in rural Pennsylvania.

The successful use of these phones breathed new life into the system. Now instead of promoting these phones to international globetrotters and jet-setting executives, the marketing is focused on new users, such as emergency and relief workers, construction workers, surveyors, engineers, scientists, news reporters, and a host of other occupations. Indeed, uses for sat phones include all areas where other forms of communications are unreliable, or nonexistent. Surprisingly, there are still many areas in the world with limited communication services.

The U.S. Department of Defense is the biggest user of Iridium phones at this time, providing communication to U.S. service members in far-flung military operations around the globe. Additionally they are being widely in many other applications where there is no other phone service, including aboard ocean going vessels, oil-rigs, frozen ice packs and polar regions and broad desert expanses.

Iridium Satellite phones are creating opportunities and expanding frontiers for those who operate beyond the fringes of civilization and in the most remote regions of Earth. The network provides world-class technical support for its users, ensuring that service is available when needed. If you are looking for phone service that is dependable and available wherever you go, Iridium satellite phones are exactly what you need.
For more information about Iridium satellite phones, the author of this article - Jesse Whitehead - recommends this satellite phone service website.