Which satellite phone & tariff to buy and where?

One doesn’t “install” the ADL120. It’s portable and used in conjunction with the ipad. Contrary to other “solutions”, it works.

No cellular network? I think you have get way out of the way nowadays to not have any at all.

No, that’s way too slow. You can send/receive SMS from the plane, and download the compressed wx data.

Moved

Iridium cannot be used for “open” internet access. The data rate of their standard service is 2.4k (about 240 bytes/sec). You could just about do short text-only emails over it. Forget modern emailing practices e.g. HTML emails, attachments… I think all Iridium commercial products are rigged to talk only to a dedicated server which packages the data into little packets. This is fine for aviation wx but it cannot be done for normal internet use.

Thuraya is much better.

However, with Thuraya, you have a problem in that they provide a COM port driver only for Windows (winXP to win8). That’s why I run a Lenovo T2 win8 tablet in the plane.

If you want to use a non-Windows client (e.g. IOS, android, MacOS) then you need one of

• the Thuraya XT USB to wifi hotspot
• the Thuraya satsleeve

There are various threads on these here. They give you a normal wifi hotspot.

This works, but a major issue is that various bits of software on the client device, from the OS itself downwards, will see they have an internet connection, and they go crazy downloading updates. The more recent a Microsoft OS you have the worse this is and I never found a way to totally disable it. IE10 and Chrome are horrible in this respect. You can go through every config menu and disable everything possible but it still leaves a lot of covert traffic. For example IE10 runs megabytes per hour of covert traffic. Firefox seems to be able to disable updates.

For aviation, the solution is fairly easy: set up a firewall to block everything and then allow just the sites you want to access. On windows you can use the built-in firewall, and by default block all outgoings, and then permit specific outgoings. On non-windows clients you normally don’t have a user-accessible firewall so you have to use the firewall in the Thuraya hotspot, and you need a lot more expertise for that.

There is a variety of Thuraya based products on the sailing market which do this, too.

I recently sold a Thuraya 7100 (9.6k dial-up internet capability) to someone and this is what I wrote up. It is the same for the Thuraya XT phone which does their “GPRS” which gives you 50k speed.

Get a prepaid SIM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thuraya-Prepaid-Valid-Months-Units-Improved-Tariff/dp/B0071MVUUO
They are international. You top them up online. I use
https://www.thurayarecharge.com/
and I normally put a $160 topup on it, which should last a couple of years.
Client device config details:
http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/satcomms/setup.html
These are just stating the obvious for setting up a DUN connection under windows – it takes about a minute. No other OS makes it anywhere near that simple.

However if you want

So can I use the ADL120 with my Macbook to do some work over it?

then you will find it’s not that simple, due to

• the above unwanted app updates trashing the connection (the only workable solution restricts the sites you can access)
• the 50k data rate, while very good by satphone speeds, is only “GPRS EDGE” speed and most modern websites don’t work (EuroGA won’t work if someone has posted a photo, for example)

So you need to be clear about what you want to use it for.

If you want to just use it for anything, you are looking at the high-end products. I believe Immarsat are a player there and the prices soon reach four digits per month for what you would call “broadband”.

No cellular network? I think you have get way out of the way nowadays to not have any at all.

My garden near Brighton, and about 90% of the UK countryside surface area, would do

Thuraya now offers the SatSleeve-Hotspot for 400 pounds.
With a smartphone, you can enable and disable the Thuraya connection. You get a wifi hotspot connected to the Thuraya network.
I believe this is the cheaper and the easier solution.

If you want full portability with an ADL system, then better choose the ADL 130.

Yes I think the Satsleeve is what most people now use, for non-windows client devices.

You still need to address the spurious traffic issue. What if you provide a hotspot for a friend nearby and his Iphone sees a “wifi” connection, decides to go for broke and downloads the IOSx.x update? I don’t know how this is fixed.

I think if you need to access the office over a VPN, there may be an easy solution, especially for a proper computer like a Mac, but I don’t know enough about it.

Rwy20 wrote:

is there any other provider of satellite services?

There’s Inmarsat and Globalstar as well