If you are planning a trip that requires traveling to a remote location and want the ability to keep in touch with your loved ones, you might want to rent satellite phones. Satellite phones enable you to communicate with your friends and family while participating in activities such as whitewater rafting, fishing, and canoeing that often take place in areas where cellular phone service is very limited if anything. This is because, unlike ordinary cellular phones, satellite phones work virtually anywhere on Earth.
Satellite phones can be rented on a weekly basis where users pay modest prices for only the calls that they make. Therefore, for someone who only wishes to have the phone in case of an emergency, satellite phones can be very affordable. In addition, it is always a good idea to have a way of contacting someone in case of an emergency, especially if you are traveling alone.
The reason that you are able to rent satellite phones for trips to remote location is that they communicate directly with orbiting satellites in space instead of towers that are located on Earth. There are two types of satellites that are used, geosynchronous orbiting (GEO) and low-Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites. GEO satellites orbit the Earth at an altitude of 22,238 miles above the equator. At this altitude, each satellite can be in contact with up to one-third of the Earth’s surface at all times. However, because of the high altitude, these phones usually use a lot of power and are very bulky.
LEO satellites orbit the Earth at a much lower altitude of 1,000 miles above the equator. These satellites only take about 100 minutes to orbit the Earth. Therefore they can only communicate with a small percentage of the Earth’s surface at once and then only for a small amount of time. For this reason, a system of LEO satellites must have many more satellites than a system of GEO satellites. However, LEO satellites are smaller than GEO phones and require much less power.