A reader recently commented that he believes that using Iridium or Globalsat for email would be more economical that the Skymate system I mentioned earlier. In a number of cases he’s right, though I would contend that it really depends on your usage patterns. The great thing, though, is that you can rent an Iridium phone for less than $200/month now (or as low as $40/week), and evaluate the pros and cons yourself. No matter what system you use, you’ll want to think about creating a new email account and taking steps to control spam. As our usual email programs tend to be rather inefficient, some technical knowledge and additional software and services can result in big savings. The MailaSail system and others like it, that focus on providing very efficient, compressed email services specifically for satphone users are well worth looking into.

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