SkyMate Versus A Connection-Based System

Over at Ocean Navigator, SkyMate’s CEO John Tandler has a few things to say on the cost of using a system like theirs.
“First, SkyMate transmits text email files much more efficiently than connection-based systems. This is because satellite phone airtime is billed in one-minute minimum increments, so for a message of less than 1,000 bytes, 98 percent of that one minute of airtime is unused. With SkyMate, the user is only charged for the amount of data actually transmitted. A user sending five separate emails per day over a Globalstar phone would use about 150 minutes of airtime per month, which in the Caribbean would cost more than $120. The same usage profile using SkyMate would cost less than $70.”