[NA]Sat (“cell”) phone system

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
20,771
Location
west Texas
Display Name
Display name:
Dave Taylor
Our local (very rural) EMS is looking at ideas to help with our regularly-failing cell service and radio systems.
(We had an outage this week where no one could comm about a cardiac patient, and it took 40 minutes to locate him - he’s fine… but).

I can’t tell much about this company which some are bandying about; maybe you have some thoughts.

it looks like they don’t have a satellite up yet?
If not, they will only have one?
(Seems lacking in coverage and redundancy)
The technology has not had thorough testing yet?
Thanks
https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/
 
SATCOM has been a thing for 40 years. And it works. Satellite Internet has been a thing for pushing 20. And it sucks. So, I dunno. How you get reliable reception without high gain dish antennas I don't know. I can see how you can probably listen. I can't see how you have enough power to talk.

But I know nothing about it. Interested in learning more.
 
All the Satcom radios I’ve used tend to have a delay, complicated to operate, and have their own reception issues.
 
I’ve had an Iridium phone for 20 years. I don’t fly without it. Voice communication is far better than texting through my Inreach. Broadband for data? Satellite sucks. The Iridium data devices are very limited in what they can do. Pretty useless in my life. Starlink sounds great but isn’t available at either of my home locations. Someday.
 
From what I know, most reliable and most cost effective communications for public safety is VHF or UHF radio, except in urban areas, where 800+ MHz works better. Texas is flat from what I understand. Here in NY where we have some hills, VHF radio works great. Sometimes it's hard to find channels, and it takes money to keep the repeaters up, but the systems are generally very solid. Public safety radio is more reliable than cell, for sure, in my experience. I think you need a good land mobile dealer.
 
Albany Tom said:
Texas is flat from what I understand.
Click to expand...

That’s part of the problem, poor reception once we are in the mountains. And no cell service.
(And there is no shame in not knowing we have mountains in west Texas. 95% of Texans don’t know either)
 
I've rented Iridium system phones several times when sending crews into the backcountry. Unless you have heavy tree cover, it works reliably. The last time, a couple years ago, I also sent the crew with a rented add-on data-capable antenna, that was able to send stuff like moderate resolution photos (around 500 Kb size), without breaking the bank. (Note, when you do this, have a dedicated device that is wiped of everything unnecessary so it won't try to connect to the internet for all kinds of background apps. They warn you about this right up front.)

Check out these guys: www.satmodo.com

You could try renting a system to see how it works out for your operations before buying something.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
That’s part of the problem, poor reception once we are in the mountains. And no cell service.
(And there is no shame in not knowing we have mountains in west Texas. 95% of Texans don’t know either)
Click to expand...

It's hilly here in NY, too. I worked as a volunteer in communications for a few years in Rensselaer County, just east of Albany, and there's a valley the goes north-south along Rt 22 that was often a dead spot for public safety comms. When they recently updated the 800 MHz system, paid for by a grant from the cell companies I think, they more or less had to double the repeaters to get adequate coverage. One of the things I helped do was drive around in that part of the county with an HT to check coverage to make sure the vendor met the spec. Coverage was predicted using some pretty sophisticated software, and it was close, but the drive test did show some things they needed to adjust. Anyway....another thing about it is that HT coverage is almost always going to be a lot shorter than vehicle coverage with an antenna on the roof with a 25+W radio.

For places we couldn't talk at all, where there were major incidents, they would bring in ham radio (my area of expertise), who would setup local repeaters, or use HF radio.

We did have some sat phones, for key people, but at the time (early 2000's) they were not all that reliable, were not usable either while mobile or inside a building, and they were expensive in terms of both purchase and service. They were packaged up in pelican boxes and deployed as required. Times may have changed a lot in that aspect, not sure.
 
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