Telstra's $10 Mobile Accelerate Casual Plan - ending for us.

In a satphone????

Ironically, we also have two mobiles on Telstra's budget offshoot (Belong) at $10/mo. They had already grandfathered that plan a couple of years ago, now they have just announced that as of April that grandfathered plan will be $15/mo.

Have been looking at Woolies for a while now as Plan B, as I figured Telstra would kill off that plan completely one day. Looks like the year of getting rid of all our remaining Telstra connections/services.

As Allan said, "it would be a sweet feeling to say goodbye to Telstra."

You can get a Boost (full Telstra network) SIM for $200 p.a., which is $16.67 per month. Is that an option?

Nope. Even though Boost is "full Telstra (but no 5G)" and shares their billing platform, sadly for satphone purposes it must be "real Telstra".

No apology needed. My omission - if you weren't across it, you couldn't be expected to know.

It was intended by Telstra as a short term "parking, between plans" solution, but it found another life and was widely used in satphones. While any of their post-paid plans (with international roaming enabled) could be used in a satphone - and still can - it was cheaper to HOLD than any of them. $10, no inclusions (calls/texts/data). Perfect as an emergency-only solution for itinerant outbackers.

Nothing lasts forever.

John, if you have any joy with your discussion with Telstra, do let us all know the outcome.

And DON'T use their chat service, as they will have absolutely no knowledge of the $10 plan, let alone what we use it for.

Hi Allan,
I have the Pivotel plan and have found it very useful especially when people can call you and it's only standard mobile costs to them.
More expensive for you to call out
but in an emergency who cares.
Especially now Pivotel allow you to "park" the plan if not being used for from memory 8ish dollars a month.
William

What phone are you using William?

Hi Allan,
Its an older Thuraya SG-2520.
No bells and whistles but does a job for us.
William

Allan, one issue with the Thuraya is maintaining a connection with the phone to your ear, it can be a bit flaky, just turning your head will cause a drop out. There's no problem at all maintaining a connection if you use headphones or a headset and keep the phone in a fixed orientation. The XT Lite generation 1 used a 3.5mm jack and Thuraya resellers in Australia no longer sell the earphones. Headsets for cordless phones work. I believe that the 2nd generation XT Lite has a regular headphone jack, but it would be useful to check what you need.

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Thanks for that Warren.
Seems that it could be a problem maintaining connectivity if you were trying to cope with an emergency (e.g. snakebite) whilst managing the phone.
My Iridium 9555 is 'on line' at all times, being connected to 12v and an external antenna and I now find that the Thuraya XT-Lite does not have an external antenna port, so that's out. Also, Thuraya does not cover SE Australia. The Inmarsat solves both those issues but at $1125 and $45/month I would be better keeping the Iridium and suffering Telstra..... Damnit.
I dislike Telstra almost as much as Apple!!

I pretty sure it does have an external antenna port, I'll take a look later this afternoon and confirm unless v2 deleted it. There is a roof mounted omnidirectional antenna.

The manual doesn't show the port but the antenna is listed as an accessory. The port is on the back of the phone where you would expect it to be.

There's a free Android app called Satbeams finder. In Canberra at my house the Thuraya 3 satellite has an elevation of 23.27 deg at a bearing of ~295 deg. I think the satphone warehouse is overly pessimistic about the coverage in SE Australia. Trees and hills can give grief, but I don't know if even the constellation type satphone services work too well in gorges and valleys? When we were in the Warrumbungles you certainly needed to be on top or at least on the NW face of slopes. No problem on any of the western plains of NSW. Perhaps an omnidirectional antenna 2 m or more high would help. Note the Thuraya XT lite and XT (I think) both lack blue tooth connectivity but there are Bluetooth adapters that plug into the headphone jack.
BTW my earlier post had it back-to-front, the v1 has a small 2.5 mm jack as opposed to the standard 3.5 mm jack.

Thanks Tony

Tony, I couldn't find any reference to renting SIMs on that site. Can you point me there?

Zippo,

I looked for it some time ago and when I posted this response, and could not find it either. Call the guy, he is really nice and definitley does rent SIMs.

That's the plan we have used for several years, but it goes up to $15 next month. There are now cheaper/better options on Telstra Wholesale - just saying.

Bz, that Sim won't do what the Telstra one did, allow Sat Phone Calls.

John, a little belated.

Having just read the stuff linked in the latest Telstra email on this forced migration, it is apparent that even on the new Upfront plans it won't work in an Iridium handset.

Did you happen to see the Whirlpool post I linked in another thread on this, where the poster claimed to have been able to get the old plan reinstated?

I have PMed him on WP. Haven't had a reply yet, but will keep people here updated if anything of benefit materialises.

Pivotel costs have increased slightly, mainly the connection fee which has increased from $25 to $35. The monthly access charge is now $16. 50. Still pretty cost effective. We only need the satphone for about three months every year, so it is still cheaper to cancel, the only disadvantage is that you get a new number each time you reactivate the service.

Not anymore, you can keep your number, but you have to pay around $8 a month to do so..

Hi, yes, this has been mentioned before, but now just wondering, does the phone have to have SIM card in it, or will it work (to ring 000) without one at all?

Cheers
Greg

I have a Motorola 9505A Iridium phone. I just made a test call to 112 with no sim. It worked.

The downside would be that they (112/000) would have no caller ID on you so no back-up if things went further pear shaped.

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Yes Frank, I have repeated the test of calling 112 without a SIM card.
After 'booting up' it displays the message "No SIM card, Emergency calls only" but I simply ignored that and keyed-in '112' and it connected to 000 Emergency.

However, Roz and I discussed the option not not having a Plan and being restricted to an "Emergency" only phone. One of the big benefits of a fully functioning satphone is being able to talk directly to a medical professional for treatment guidance rather than simply 'bleeding-to-death' waiting for the cavalry to arrive. Also, you can receive call-backs and from referrals etc.
Emergencies can come the other way too. Several years ago I received a call while in the middle of the Anne Beadell Hwy. My sister was in her final moments of life and I was able to speak to her. It meant a lot!
And of course there are the less-than-emergency conveniences.

So Roz and I have decided to fork out the annual $540. I can always give up the booze. Only joking!

Incidentally, I understand the the emergency call with no SIM works also with cell phones.

Allan, I agree with your premise. But I just wanted to answer the question raised - "Can you call 112/000 with no SIM in the satphone,?"
So I thought I'd test to give a yes or no answer.
Cheers

Hi Frank,
Perhaps you misinterpreted my first sentence.
It meant "Yes, I agree with you. And the reference to "I have repeated the test..." etc. referred to me repeating the test that I did earlier, but with more success than before. I ignored the displayed message and pushed on. I was pleased that you confirmed my idea of utilising the phone without a SIM.
All good?

"All good?"

Absolutely, Allan, no problems at all. In trying to keep my response brief (unusual for me!) perhaps it came across as a bit too direct. Not intended, and apologies if that was the case.

I didn't monitor the display much as I had the handset on my ear for most of the test. On boot-up the display showed "Check SIM" or something similar. After I dialled 112 I had it against my ear so don't know what it displayed. There were no progress tones, just silence, then a message "You have dialled emergency triple zero, transferring you now" or words to that effect, followed by almost immediate connection to a triple zero call centre.

I trust you are enjoying your new mobile abode and are safe from the coastal mayhem.

Cheers

.
Frank, I terminated the 112 call as soon as the 'computer' answered me. What happened when you were answered by the call centre? Did you get chided and sent to the Naughty Corner?

The Sprinter only awaits the insect screens (yawn) and has survived a couple of short shakedown trips.
It (and I) have survived Covid but now all this rain is a problem. Sitting in the driveway going "vroom, vroom'.

Allan, you're going to need to update your profile pic - when there's a suitable backdrop of course ...

.
Yeah, I know Zippo. But I liked the Troopy..... and the Simpson.
Maybe when I take the Sprinter over Big Red?

"Frank, I terminated the 112 call as soon as the 'computer' answered me. What happened when you were answered by the call centre? Did you get chided and sent to the Naughty Corner?"

No, I explained very quickly that it was a test call on an emergency satellite phone, I won't take up any more of your time. She said thank you, and that was it. All done in under 10 seconds.

I was reluctant to do it but after the conversation in this thread I became increasingly uneasy about what we had in place, ie whether or not swapping the SIM from one of our ordinary phones would continue to work. Now we know we have a fallback.

Cheers

I was doing this.. but now I cant seem to get any incoming calls, only outgoing.. its pretty flaky, so i gave up.. for an emergency phone it just has to work.