Mini M sat phone part of GMDSS? Service response time?

[Anonymous]

I have a Mini M sat phone on a scheme whereby I lodge $500 with the provider and I pay no monthly connect charges but they take money from my CC as I use the service. In essence, their use of my $500 is payment for my connection -- which is fine by me. I've had the service since 2004 and every winter, before going cruising, I find that the phone has been cut off. Normally an email is enough to get it working again. Five days ago (just before Easter, to be fair to them) I faxed and emailed that my phone was off and would they please check it. I heard nothing back until this morning (five days later) and they have passed my issue over to their tech support dept. who have not bothered to reply to my feedback. Tomorrow will be day six.

The firm I am dealing with is called AST Communications.

I am as certain as I can be that the problem is at their end as my system looks and sounds normal -- I get 'MES Time-out' whenever I try to dial out but I am on the correct LES and correct region, with five bars (=max) on the signal strength. My volts are excellent and the antenna 'sings', which is normal. I have no idea what MES Time-out actually means, though.

My understanding is that Mini M is part of the GMDSS system -- to have a Mini M that is offline without support for 5 hours is totally unacceptable, let alone 5 or 6 days, or more? Isn't it rather like your EPIRB being disconnected for days on end?

But maybe I have misunderstood.....I thought that the whole point of going for Mini M rather than Iridium was that it is an approved component of GMDSS?

Can anyone tell me what sort of service I ought to expect as a 'right' in case I have misunderstood?

Many thanks.

 

[Bilgediver]

MES time out

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I've worked through those now. I have visited the Inmarsat site and see that they re-positioned all the satellites effective Feb 2009 and apparently Mini M only now works on AORW, worldwide, on a spot-beam basis and now with no coverage on the Antarctic peninsular. So I changed over to AORW with some confidence that we had sorted the problem....not. I can't fathom out what Inmarsat are saying...on the one hand they say that Mini M is only available on the AORW satellite with 'spot beam' yet they show a footprint for the AORW that really only covers from around LA to Italy. Which is what you'd expect from a geostationary satellite but they claim a worldwide coverage other than Antarctica and a few 'holes'. That cannot be possible with one geostationary satellite.

http://www.inmarsat.com/Support/Coverage/Mini_M.aspx?language=EN&textonly=False

Where I am, in Rome, I should be able to use AORW or AORE (from the coloured footpints shown on the above link) yet neither work.

My gut tells me that my problem is a result of the changes in the Inmarsat system rather than a problem with my system because my system looks perfectly normal in every respect.

Has anyone else been having trouble with Inmarsat Mini M since February?

 

[mocruising]

Mine is working fine.