Can the Iridium satellites be used for telephone calls and Internet surfing?
South Pole Station personnel can use Iridium for telephone calls if they follow the station’s policy on making such calls; however, Iridium cannot be used for Internet access because of bandwidth. These are low data rate connections that cannot support Internet surfing and multiple telephone calls like the TDRS and GOES satellites can. However, Iridium satellites are suited for email traffic, up to a point. An email less than 100 KB goes out any time of the day. The path it uses depends on which satellite is available (TDRS, GOES, or Iridium). Email messages larger than 100 KB (for example, those messages that contain photos as attachments) enter a queue for transmission on the next TDRS or GOES event. Also, any large file transfers use TDRS and GOES.
