huv wrote:
what is the TEL feature for?
Telephony. Calling home. Like ET. On Iridium.
Or you can call on your old Nokia GSM phone. The best phone is something that works on 900Mhz with a proper antenna and Bluetooth.
BTW my old Ericsson GH388 (which had a proper antenna) used to work well on my ski boat 15 Nm off shore at sea level. Now my fancy dual SIM smartphone drops calls in my house and I can see the phone mast out of the window! Modern technology hey – I have a phone which does all sorts of stuff except making phone calls.
Voice calls over Iridium are eye-wateringly expensive. Check out the calling rate to or from your terrestrial network 
I recall GBP 6.00 per minute – a few years ago. And the quality was extremely borderline – like the worst ever ATC audio quality.
For sure modern smartphones are rubbish compared to a Nokia 9310i. But even the last Nokia smartphones (e.g. the 808) outperformed anything out today on signal acquisition. The problem is that these old phones cannot run apps like Telegram which can get you wx data (using e.g. the Autorouter bot). So I don’t really think this helps when flying. GSM voice calls work poorly in flight because the signal is continually broken – unless you fly at the “UK burger run level” i.e. 1500ft and even then it probably won’t work for long.
We are on a monthly rate that gives us more minutes than we use, so we don’t worry about the cost of using it.
