November 13, 2016
This shouldn’t happen to a piece of expensive equipment that’s less than three years old and has only been out of it’s docking station three or four times!
I took the phone out of the docking station before our recent passage for a good cleaning and found that the case had split down the seam. There are only a few, flimsy, plastic tabs that snap into place to hold the case together. Two had broken. This device is supposed to be waterproof to some extent. One reason I bought this over the Iridium Go was so that I could use it in a liferaft should that time ever come. I don’t believe that this device is at all waterproof! Especially with the case falling apart!
Solution (maybe): I put a bead of silicone glue in the seam and I’m hoping it holds the phone together.
The poor build quality is only one reason that I am extremely dissatisfied with Iridium. Here are the others…
Each data call takes a long time to connect. The phone says “Verifying Username and Password” for at least 20 seconds. There is no username or password! Twenty seconds just happens to be the billing increment. Coincidence?
Connections are hard to make. It often takes two or three tries to get through, even if I wait (sometimes quite a long time) for five bars of service. (Don’t even try a data call with less than five bars!) I’ve read that several Iridium satellites have failed (two more in the last quarter) and that this may be leaving gaps in the constellation. One reason I chose Iridium over other carriers was their supposed global coverage. It seems that might not be the case anymore.
Airtime is EXPENSIVE and their expiration policies are archaic. If you happen to have several hundred minutes of airtime left at the expiration date, it costs you almost as much to extend the expiration of those minutes as it does to buy them in the first place. There is also a somewhat strange culture around selling that airtime. It’s possible to find different charges from different outlets. It’s way too much work to research this each year when renewing.
(To answer the most common question in advance: Yes, we do have an external antenna. Sat phones are pretty useless in a boat without an external antenna.)
If this phone fails or falls apart (again), I think I’ll look at some of the other satellite phone carriers. From us, Iridium gets a big Boo. -Rich
Update: In November, 2019:
We sold the 9575 cheap (with full disclosure to the sucker, ah, I mean buyer) and bought and installed an Iridium Go. I still hate Iridium but the Go makes it a little more tolerable. We’re using the unlimited airtime option for the Go. We can cancel this and reinstate it (with a different SIM card) whenever we want with no cancellation or activation fees (except the $10 for the SIM card). I suspect that we’ll end up paying a little more for airtime each year, but the peace of mind might be worth it.
We bought it from Predict Wind and I can’t say enough about their great customer service. I recommend them highly.
