SMS to sat phone?

[whipper_snapper]

Would you expect a 'typical' sat-phone to receive a normal SMS from a mobile phone?


I'm currently in Addis Ababa trying to communicate with someone in the middle of the Adriatic. He has a sat-phone, I have a roaming mobile. Calls are impossible, sometimes he gets through to me but the quality of the connection is too poor to exchange any information, when i call him I get to his voicemail. I'm sending SMS's and I don't know if they are being received. I asked for confirmation from him and got nothing back.

No idea what sort of phone it is, the country code is +881

Thanks

(PS. Any recommendations on best online source of weather information for Adriatic and down to Malta?)

 

[sailaboutvic]

This I find is good for Italy
http://www.lamma.rete.toscana.it/mare/modelli/vento-e-mare

And this on for Croatia .
http://prognoza.hr/nauticari_e.php?id=ju_jadran&param=uv10_&it=12

There are others off cause

If you use both to gather you should get a forecaster as good as any other .
Hope it helps

 

[jdc]

No I wouldn't. Your friend has an Iridium phone, and the Iridium phone system's text message system is not, in general, compatible with that of terrestrial mobiles (sometimes it works, with Voda it definitely doesn't, it's absolutely not to be relied on).

You should go onto the Iridium portal and send it from there. http://messaging.iridium.com/

 

[whipper_snapper]

Thanks both, very helpful responses.

 

[macd]

You should go onto the Iridium portal and send it from there. http://messaging.iridium.com/

Sounds similar to Inmarsat: SMS are free to send, which encourages friends ashore to send weather/routing info.