February 15, 2010 10:19
Most cruisers get away with one 500 minute prepaid card per year. The amount of time used depends on how many calls you make. Voice is in particular eats up the air time.
A 3 day wind grib file consisting of 12 forecasts (0-72 hours) the size of the Caribbean Sea takes about 1 minute to download.
It takes about 1 minute of airtime to send/receive 10 text e-mails 2-10Kb in size.
So... if you limit your self to 1 grib file per day and 1 e-mail session per day your 500 SIM card will last about 250 days.
However, most people only use their Iridium phone while at sea and use wifi when at port. So... the actual number of days at sea during a year is considerably less than 250 for most users.
--luis
A 3 day wind grib file consisting of 12 forecasts (0-72 hours) the size of the Caribbean Sea takes about 1 minute to download.
It takes about 1 minute of airtime to send/receive 10 text e-mails 2-10Kb in size.
So... if you limit your self to 1 grib file per day and 1 e-mail session per day your 500 SIM card will last about 250 days.
However, most people only use their Iridium phone while at sea and use wifi when at port. So... the actual number of days at sea during a year is considerably less than 250 for most users.
--luis