ksanders
Moderator Emeritus
KS,
Thanks for the info.
We would be using cellular 90% of the time, and have a wifi booster on the arch which helps with signal. I can sometimes can get wifi off our phones 30 plus miles off shore, but it's spotty.
We travel along the coast, but the problem is when we are in offshore Islands and tucked away in a cove and our service is not reliable for work related things. I am retired and just part time consulting now, but my wife is still full time and she needs a reliable Sat service for important phone calls, email, etc.
I haven't done much research on this lately because it will be a 2022 project if it happens, so I know enough to be dangerous at this point.
How are phone calls counted toward your data usage? I googled the amount of data they consume, but I am unclear how this translates within the data plan?
Is there an App you use for phone calls, or just normal phone usage as you would on land?
If you have say 5 hours of phone calls one day, how much data have you roughly used within your plan?
The system provides a dedicated analog phone line which costs 50 cents a minute an adder to your bill. You just hook up a regular phone. We use a cordless. The problem with any geostationary satellite phone call is the approx 1/2 second delay. The quality is very clear, as good or better than a good cellular call, but the delay does exist.
Another option would be to use WIFI calling over your iphone.
Yet another option is using a SIP phone system. We just transitioned away from our old PBX at my business and went with a cloud based VOIP solution. (we did this as a further move to cut our land based tether for our business). I use the new VOIP phone over cellular just fine and will be testing it out over the new SATCOM terminal in the coming weeks.
VOIP data usage would deduct from your rate plan allocation, just like any other data stream. I did test our new VOIP phones for idle time data use and found that it is remarkably low at less than a MB per day.
The big thing, and I know I'm repeating myself is that you need a router that can use multiple internet sources, and pick the one it's using based on a priority list. I am not sure what's on the market as far as brands. I use Cradlepoint routers and really like them. They are not cheap home gear, they are industrial class equipment meant for this kind of service.
Another really important thing is to minimize your satellite data use. Block all streaming, and device updates for one. All the background stuff is not needed in the short term over satellite. Block devices like cloud recording of security cameras, or anything unnecessary while on satellite. Just enable the basics. Web surfing, email, etc... and you'll find your data usage to be much smaller than you imagine.
Then when you reach an area with cellular everything automatically is unblopcked.
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