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Any Thuraya sat phone *data* users out there?

I have been doing some tests on the three Hughes phones the company offers; the 7100, SO-2510, SG-2520.

The old 7100 works OK for dial-up (does not support GPRS) and has a decent battery life. Dial up data rate ~ 1.3kbytes/sec.

The SO- gives only half the data rate of the 7100, which is bizzare. GPRS works only every 5th or 10th connection and packs up within minutes.

The SG- works on dial-up similarly to the 7100 but a bit slower (about

1.1 kbytes/sec) and GPRS does not work at all. It also has a really stupid bug: doing a Disconnect on the PC does not disconnect the call

- you have to do it manually on the phone's keypad. It seems to ignore both DTR dropping and the ~~~+++~~~ method. The bluetooth connection works OK; curiously the FAX mode is 10-20% faster on dial-up data than the DUN mode... But the battery life, when not making a call but anytime bluetooth is communicating, is only about 2 hours.

These products seem only half finished, and the duff GPRS service (for which Thuraya charge a lot extra per month if you are on contract) is a puzzle. Why would anybody launch a $X BN satellite without first testing it works?

Their tech support is nonexistent - recruited from the Vodafone PAYG Team no doubt ;)

If anybody has solved the hangup problem in particular, I would be very interested. Their OEM modules can hardly be this crappy; they would be useless.

x----------x

Reply to
occassionally-confused
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I have an update on this.

The SG-2520 phone works on GPRS - it was a SIM card registration issue.

Thuraya customer service are now responsive.

Reply to
Peter

An additional update: the hangup problem on dial-up remains unsolved, but with GPRS working it doesn't really matter since one only pays for the data, and the GPRS connection does disconnect more reliably than the dial-up one, anyway.

A solution to the ATH0 dial-up issue would still be great.

Reply to
Peter

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Reply to
zorlu

No, never solved it.

The 7100/7101 hangs up reliably.

The other phones were crap.

The new XT I have not tested. I don't think it has an RS232 interface anyway - does it?

Thuraya monitor internet comments about them and emailed me asking me to remove those posts :) But they did not ever answer any technical questions about their phones.

zorlualtun_at_yahoo_dot snipped-for-privacy@foo.com (zorlu) wrote:

counting!

Reply to
Peter

Meanwhile, at the uk.telecom.mobile Job Justification Hearings, Peter chose the tried and tested strategy of:

Hilarious. Did they offer any reason for wanting you to remove your questions? Sounds pretty much like the opposite of customer service - not only will they not help you, they don't even want you to ask!

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Reply to
alexd

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