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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Iridium Go is 2.4 Kbits/s compared with 350 Mbps here, and data is charged in minutes (i.e. the slower/worse the connection the more it costs). Apples and oranges.

Iridium GO is cheap, but that's all you can really say positively about it. It is arguably not even offering "internet" in the normal sense, since loading a website would be incredibly expensive/bad and is therefore restricted to low data rate messaging and plain text weather updates.

Is $5K/month a niche product? Undeniably yes, and I hope to see more flex offerings later, but this isn't a good comparison.

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Iridium Go is designed to hit a price point. Whats the cheapest way to get data out in the middle of the Atlantic and is basically plug and play. It has leapfrogged SSB packet radio as the preferred, low cost data service.

Also data is not charged in minutes, it's theoretically unlimited. The voice plans are charged in minutes and I don't think worth it.

Just like the RO water-makers in the past, I believe this is the opening salvo in bringing data prices down on the high seas. A few providers have been the only players in this field (Inmarsat and Iridium) and it shows. Prices haven't budged in ages.

> Also data is not charged in minutes, it's theoretically unlimited.

If you buy the 'medium plan' for $119/month [1] you get 150 Minutes of 'Data, Standard Voice or combination of both' and can buy additional data for US$0.42/min. And the 'light plan' [2] at $57/month includes just 5 minutes.

Data seems to a "call via the Iridium GO! Access number" like old school dial-up.

It's only if you buy the 'heavy plan' for $149 [3] that you get the 'Unlimited Data'

Or am I misunderstanding things?

[1] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-paid-serv... [2] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-paid-serv... [3] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-paid-serv...

If we're comparing price to a $5,000/month offering, I think it's totally reasonable to compare it to the $149/month package of Iridium.

Maybe, though there are 43830 minutes in a month and that package offers 150-mins. Guessing there better bulk min plans, but at the 0.42 a min over the 150-mins, that’s $18345.60 + the monthly fee.

That plan offers unlimited data minutes, not 150.

My colleagues at the South Pole have to pay for Iridium in bytes.

There's no competition up there, GEO sats are too far north to see the Pole.

> Also data is not charged in minutes, it's theoretically unlimited.

I'd argue it is inherently very limited – 2.4 kbit/s is really not a lot, even sustained over a whole month ;)

Any given ship in the shipping industry probably burns that in fuel per day. Or half day. I think the value proposition is in line. I'll admit it seems expensive from the perspective of our dream sail around the world whilst coding and collecting benjamins from various hustles.

A Panamax container ship, not the largest, can burn 10 metric tonnes an hour of bunker oil, more or less.[2]

Very Low Sulfer Fuel Oil (VLSFO) is running, depending on where the ship is loading up, 850 to 1150 USD a tonne.(July 7 2022)[1]

In round numbers, say, USD 1,000 a tonne, USD 10,000 an hour, USD 250,000 a day, and for a 20 day trip, USD 5,000,000.

[1] https://shipandbunker.com/prices

[2] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-many-gallons-of-fuel-d...

Thanks for the clarification; I didn’t want to overspeak. Next question though, how do they onboard 42x that much fuel for a 6 week transpacific journey?

I doubt there are many other options for internet in the ocean

Don't forget Inmarsat.

https://www.inmarsat.com/en/solutions-services/maritime/serv...

Or Globalstar.

https://www.globalstar.com/en-us/blog/articles/satellite-sol...

globalstar is a bad joke and not a viable option for maritime services (or over-ocean aviation services) because unlike iridium or inmarsat, its satellite terminal-to-earth-station architecture is a bent pipe.

there is zero globalstar mid ocean coverage.

there is a reason you will see lots of competing options for people integrating the iridium embedded modems into things designed to go on top of $40 million business jets and just about zero globalstar.

An Iridium embedded modem is one of the things we came across in the wreckage of a small plane we were recovering the pilot's remains from[0].

It was for his Spidertracks[1] flight tracking system. (Which, with the ADSB track, helped us hone in on the possible location. The wreck ended up being right in line with the last few pings.

[0] https://lompocrecord.com/news/local/experienced-solvang-bush...

[1] https://www.spidertracks.com/

there's iridium SBD modems for low data rate/non-realtime comms (like position trackers) and full featured iridium voice/data modems integrated into a vast array of products now, in the land mobile, aviation and maritime segments.

one thing iridium has actually done really well is provide the developer documentation to make this fairly straightforward, there's a set of 600 page PDF files with every detail you could possibly need to make a very tiny embedded linux system talk to an iridum modem over a UART.

The Garmin inReach[0] line of satellite communicators are another example of a 3rd party Iridium partnership. Given the size/form factor, I wonder if they're using more custom hardware than just an off-the-shelf module for their integration.

They're another example of exorbitant fees for tiny bits of data. (Though, being able to text pretty much anywhere on the globe on a tiny device is really nice - even with a 20minute RTT.)

[0] https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/inreach/professional/

Is Iridium really competitive for business jets? The bandwidth of even their next-generation satellites does not seem competitive with the GEOs, and I'd guess bizjets should be mostly fine with their latitude limitations.

I'd expect most of them to go with one of the Ka band these days; they have pretty small antennas available these days as far as I know.

a small to medium sized business jet can easily mount an iridium terminal on top of it, where even the smallest/least capable geostationary vsat cannot.

you can fairly easily integrate iridium into something as small as a cessna 172...

at the minimum iridium will provide the ability to make phone calls to/from the PSTN while in the middle of an ocean on its smallest terminal. go up in terminal size a bit and you get something good for 500kbps of data.

for very large business jets that would be crossing the atlantic or pacific, that's a different market (overlaps somewhat with the same aviation VSAT terminals you would see on a 737-900 MAX)

People are using starlink on their boats currently for the standard price plus $30 to allow movement

Doesn't matter. No person outside the mega wealthy are paying for this.

How often do people who aren't mega wealthy find themselves in the middle of the ocean anyway? What non-wealthy person is even looking for this?

I'm planning on moving onto a sailing boat this year, I'd be very interested if it was something an mere mortal could afford but at that price I'm sticking to 5G mobile broadband. Marine Starlink would have given me a broader range of places I can stay (especially remote areas) but the cost is far too high.

I think it's targeted at maritime business, not individual consumers.

Can I get 10 Mb/s for $142/mo?

No but are you going to pay $5k? Lol

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