Subsequently to me posting this, a dialogue has opened:

Hi, Stuart.

My name is Liz DeCastro and I'm the Corporate Communications Director at Iridium Satellite. I came across your blog dated June 22 regarding what sounds like a negative experience you had with your Iridium service while in Quito. Can you tell me more about what happened? I'd like to try to help rectify the situation, if possible.

Best Regards,
Liz DeCastro
Iridium Satellite


Dear Liz,

Thanks for taking the time to e-mail.

My issue with using the Iridium network in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands was that it simply wasn't reliable enough.

I'd estimate that on around 80% of the occasions I tried dialling numbers (I was dialling people in the UK and US) the calls would not connect. Very often when I did get through the calls would drop off midway through the conversation. The voice quality on calls was also very poor. Whether this may have had anything to do with being right on the Equator I don't know but I found using the Iridium network thoroughly frustrating.

As you may be aware, I work as a World Affairs Producer with BBC News in London. I rely completely on satellite technology to communicate from remote locations and usually use Inmarsat and Thurayas (as you know Thuraya doesn't cover the South America region). I've encountered few of these problems with the other systems.

To give you a real life example. In April 2003, while covering the war in Iraq, I stepped on an anti-personnel landmine which subsequently required my leg to be amputated below the knee. The reliability of the Thuraya network meant my colleagues were able to organise immediate emergency medical aid, inform my family and editors in London and arrange repatriation back to the UK. Such prompt and reliable communications may have saved my life. In a life-or-death situation such as this I was grateful my colleagues did not have to contend with dropped calls or poor call quality.

With all best regards,
Stuart

Staying with the subject of modern communications, while on the Galapagos I picked up a postcard from the barrel in Post Office Bay addressed to a person living near my parents in south Wales.

On my return I forwarded it on and received the following e-mail in reply:

Dear Stuart,

Many thanks for the postcard from my daughter Laura; it arrived this morning, 27th June. Their system seems to work almost as fast as ours and feels even more personal; it's like getting two communications. Thank you and best wishes for your future newsgathering!

I'm not going to make any snide comments about dropping a postcard into a barrel in the middle of the ocean being a more effective form of communication than a satellite phone.