Many offshore sailors will be familiar with the vagaries of using a basic satellite phone on board. There’s the anxious wait as the modem establishes a data connection and the breath-holding as the tablet downloads GRIB files and emails at sub-dialup speeds. The airtime plan is like something from the 1980s cellular world, with separate data plans or calltime, all carefully set up to ensure it works. With a bigger budget it is possible to install a bigger antenna capable of faster data transfer. But costs can quickly spiral into the hundreds or even thousands of US dollars per month. All that is changing, however, as global players like Inmarsat invest heavily in new satellite constellations and new entrants such as Starlink roll out their services.
New services and cheaper terminals are already encouraging more offshore sailors to invest in sat comms, according to Iridium. ‘Fifteen years ago there was no way most people
