Making calls to satellite phones has been restricted, though most will not know. Because we have cause to use one (both a satellite phone and satellite messenger) This is deeply worrying for us. About a year ago Telstra decided you now have to have a new dedicated SIM for your sat phone (without telling us) or it will only be able to make one minute of calls. Previously we had a normal 3G SIM (which Telstra had installed) in ours. It worked both in and out fine for years. Now I discover that many other people (whom I can call with my sat phone) cannot call or message me back depending on who they have as their carrier. Unfortunately this applies to all my children. Similar difficulties arise with satellite messenger messaging.
I will complain to the Minister of Communications about this situation (because it is dangerous) but don’t expect anything to happen. Fortunately you seem to be able to make outgoing calls and messages. It is just incoming which are affected. You can imagine that this will create problems though in emergency situations and require one to leave the satellite phone switched on for longer unnecessarily (while the battery goes flat) or having to make more outgoing calls when awaiting rescue/helicopters etc. I expect people will die as a result of this. Hopefully not me.
I was just about to make the switch from Telstra as I could have saved half my mobile phone cost by switching to Aldi or Boost both of which use pretty much the same (Teltra) network (though only Boost has all of the coverage) as well as much more free data – a saving of $300 per year for each of us when I noticed (in their fine print that the ’included service’ did not include calls to satellite phones. This did not just mean that you would be charged extra for them (what you would expect – and what used to happen). What it meant was that you would not be able to call or message them at all. Boost confirmed this. I checked this out with my son’s phone (Aldi) and found that he was completely unable to call or message my sat phone and had some difficulties with my Sat Messenger as well. You can see that this is true by scrolling down to ‘What’s Not Included’ eg here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0490/0896/7844/files/CIS_MOSC2134-22102025.pdf?v=1730060345
PS: Apparently you can cure this by transferring your satellite phone to Pivotel: https://www.pivotel.com.au/plans-iridium-satellite-phone-plans.html
Here are the helpful comments about that:
Adam: The same thing happened to us at work. We used a normal phone plan with roaming and it was fine.
But iridium has stopped roaming being allowed and if want to stay with Telstra you have to purchase a dedicated plan.
So we went to Pivotel instead. Local numbers and free inbound calls, unlike the Telstra plan where you paid for both!
Steve: Useful information. So can you still use your Iridium Extreme phone with Pivotel?
Adam: Yep you sure can! They are a reseller just like Telstra is. The secret is you call your family and hang up and let them call you back for free!
Adam: Or if you have a messenger thing send the message and they can call you back incoming messages are allowed. Can you confirm that they are? I see incoming calls are free.
Adam: No need to “transfer” simply setup a new service and you get a new sim card with them / iridium. All messages received are free
Steve: So, it doesn’t matter which carrier your caller has, they will still be able to call or message you on Pivotel. Am I right about that?
Adam: That is correct. You get a 04xx 124 456 type number and it’s just like they are texting a normal mobile or making a phone call. Costs the same too and not huge fees like if you went with Telstra/iridium direct.
Adam: And best thing Steve is you can put the service on hold when you don’t need it!
Steve: The Pivotel satellite service will cost us $65 a month (as compared with Telstra at $50) but we will get $15 of free calls plus free messaging in and out and calls in will be free – so a lot better. As it is a ‘standard’ number everyone will be able to call/message us – So, problem solved.
In addition, we will transfer our mobile services to Boost Mobile at $25 per month as compared with Telstra at $50. We will get four times as much data at half the price for the service with exactly the same mobile coverage map.
