satellite phones, modems, oh my!

after deciding that it would be the best decision ever to have a blog about the trip, the topic of how to update said blog came into play. enter very old still shiny and modernly cool satellite phone world. as can be guessed, slap satellite inline with anything and you'll be met with a hefty price tag. add old into the mix and you got yourself a premium.

iridium, that's the name of the phone manufacturer. i'm sure that someone figured it would be cute to name their phones after a precious metal. see, the cost to buy one of these suckers is about $1500. according to father mine, that's down from 5 years ago when it was about $3000. at least you can rent a unit for the low-low price of $75 a week. did i mention that you have to pay exorbitant rates by the minute? to the tune of about $1.75. but if i really want to save money, i could pre-purchase 2000 minutes... that's when the price per minute drops to $0.99.

so how does this tie into data and updating blogs. yea. i forgot to mention. that rental rate is just for the phone. apparently there are a couple of challenges with data connections on these lovely units. first, you have to rent an attachment. next, connections crawl at a blazing 9kb/s. further, there's no bluetooth--i'm pretty sure its rs-232 providing the data connection, see above re: old--and no option for usb. finally, its $200 just for the attachment.

apparently there's a hi-speed satellite modem option that gets broadband access to the tune of >450kb/s... its a different unit entirely, at about $200, but who knows what the cost per minute will be on the data plans.

sigh. remind me why this is a good idea? maybe i can pimp mike while we're on the road to cover cost...