Iridium Introduces New Postpaid Satellite Airtime

As of September 1st, Iridium has a brand-new postpaid satellite airtime plan. They've reformulated their standard basic plan to include 10 minutes of satellite airtime and 10 SMS per month. 

Why is this a big deal? It means that Iridium users with phones like Iridium Extreme and Iridium 9555 now have a better option for emergency or extremely low-use airtime, with the convenience of 10 minutes built-in to the plan per month (and at no extra cost over what the airtime cost before). 

Why Postpaid?

Postpaid airtime is when you sign up for a flat monthly fee in a yearly contract. Sometimes carriers will call this a subscription. Sometimes it's called "pay as you go." Postpaid plans have a 12 month commitment.

(For a more comprehensive look at the differences between prepaid and postpaid airtime, take a look at this blog post).  

There are some definite advantages to postpaid satellite airtime over prepaid satellite airtime. Notably:

• Airtime always available. Because you pay for minutes as you use them (in this case, at the rate of $1.17 per minute after you've used the first 10 included in your monthly bundle), you will never reach a limit on your minutes, run out of them, or need to reload.
• No validity period. Same idea goes for the validity period. Since prepaid satellite airtime has definite validity periods for minutes, you lose them if you don't use them up or reload them within an exact time window. Didn't reload fast enough? They're gone. With postpaid you never have to worry about expiring minutes. 
• Smaller upfront cost. With prepaid minutes, you need to pay for all your minutes upfront. For postpaid airtime, you pay as you go, which usually means that your bill at any one time is much lower than what you pay in one go for prepaid airtime.
• Better per-minute rate. Iridium prepaid per-minute rates depend on the amount of airtime you're buying, but tend to be in the $1.44 range. With postpaid airtime, you pay $1.17 per minute.  

Compatible Equipment

Iridium's postpaid basic plan works with the following satellite phones and terminals:

Iridium Extreme
RedPort Aurora
Iridium 9555
Iridium 9505a, 9505, and 9500
BEAM RST100
SC4000