three years ago we were down in the exumas. friends had a three thousand dollar globalstar phone setup and it wouldn't work after they left florida. kept dropping calls whenever they could even get a signal. one day on a beach we talked about it with them and some other cruisers and everyone was having lots of trouble.

i've been testing spot since yesterday and it appears to be working flawlessly. practical sailor did a review of it a few months back and had pretty good luck with it too. they did comment that globalstar was problematic but then said that spot uses the 'simplex' part of the satellite, not the 'duples' required for telephone, and that might explain why it works better.

i'll report back on this when i get some real world experience....