Communication: 40 times faster! - Iridium introduces new "Go! exec" router
Johannes Erdmann
· 24.01.2023
Staying in touch with home during ocean passages and even in the most remote places has been one of the most important needs of every sailor, and not just since Corona and the Boat Office. Anyone who is on board or even sailing around the world wants to share their experiences. However, this was previously only possible to a very limited extent because Internet connections away from coastal waters and GSM network transmission masts could only be established via satellite - which for the average sailor was associated with data transmission speeds reminiscent of a modem in the early 1990s.
After the simple satellite mobile phones, the introduction of the Iridium Go! router a few years ago represented a major milestone in communication, as it suddenly became possible to replace the bulky mobile phone bone with your own smartphone. Using an intelligent, file-compressing app, it was now possible to make phone calls with the smartphone via the router, but also to write emails and messages and receive comprehensive weather reports in the form of Grib files on board. However, if the journey took you a long way and you needed to check the general weather situation, the Iridium Go router could sometimes have to work for half an hour. If you hadn't booked a data flat rate, you had to limit yourself to partial sections or coarser grids.
Between 2017 and 2019, however, the 66 Iridium satellites were replaced one by one as part of "Iridium Next", which should offer significantly more technical possibilities. However, the old terminals initially remained the bottleneck through which the data slowly reached the satellites.
Now, however, a new milestone is in sight: the Iridium router "Go! exec", which will not only have the same specifications as its predecessor (worldwide coverage, waterproof to IP65, simple operation), but can also utilise the potential of the new generation of satellites for the first time. The model also allows direct calls to be made via the router. Until now, one criticism of the old Go! was that in the event of an emergency at sea, the router in the life raft (apart from the SOS button) was not much help because a (saltwater-prone) smartphone is also required to make calls. The manufacturer also claims that the transmission speed is up to 40 times faster than that of the old Iridium Go!
This opens up completely new possibilities for the user. For the first time, it will now also be possible to send photos in an appropriate resolution, use Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp - and much more. In conjunction with a data hub sold separately by the provider Predictwind, the Iridium Go! exec can even send additional boat data to a Predictwind map via the tracking function and learn with every mile to calculate the polar data for its own boat more accurately. In this way, the software is able to output increasingly accurate data via the routing function.
The Iridium Go! exec costs Predictwind.com initially 1,599 US dollars, which means a price of around 1,788 euros including VAT. Plus the import duty. This makes it almost twice as expensive as the previous model. It is not yet available from German dealers.
The data packages are also correspondingly more expensive: Predictwind offers monthly packages between the "Go! exec 25" tariff (25 free minutes, 25 megabytes of data) for around 103 euros and the "Go! exec 250" tariff (250 minutes, 250 megabytes of data) for 376 euros. Annual packages are also available, starting with the "Go! exec Yearly 600" (600 minutes, 600 megabytes) for 1,786 euros.
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