Time for a Satphone – KVH Shipping TracPhone V3 Mini-VSAT
New KVH TracPhone V3 Mini-VSAT
One of the more significant news items from the recent Miami Show was the announcement from KVH of its new mini-VSAT package, the TracPhone V3, which is the smallest Ku-band maritime VSAT antenna in the world at just 14.5″ (37 cm) in diameter. The company said today that it has shipped the first fully FCC-licensed units to customers.
Maybe even more important to cruisers and passagemakers are the airtime costs with this system – including simple, straightforward metered service at just $0.49 per minute for voice calls worldwide and $0.99 per megabyte at the fastest speeds available on the network. That’s pretty much unheard of in the satcom biz and it means that this kind of communications capability is going to be available to a huge new potential customer base for KVH.
Are airtime costs the main reason you haven’t considered a sat phone option on your boat? Do these kind of rates change that for you? Tell us in the comments.
Copyright © 2011 by OceanLines LLC. All rights reserved.
Category: Cruising Under Power, Cruising Under Sail, Electronics, Technology
About the Author (Author Profile)
Tom Tripp is the owner of OceanLines LLC, and the publisher of OceanLines and Marine Science Today. He is an award-winning marine journalist, science writer and long-time public communications specialist. His PR career and much of his writing stems from the fact that he loves to explain stuff. It all began when he and his brother Mark threw all of Mom's tomatoes at the back wall of the house. . .Subscribe
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It’s about time that the hegemony of Inmarsat is put to an end with an excellent product and service offering like the KVH V3. I will be, for the first time, be installing sat data and voice on my vessel.