http://www.google.com/search?q=isatphon ... =firefox-a
http://www.satworx.com has it for $495
The difference between this and Iridium is that the iSatphone talks to Inmarsat's I-4 series geostationary satellites. This does mean there's a 500ms return trip lag on everything, but that's the same as Thuraya, which also talks to GEO satellites in a 36,000 km orbit. You need to have truly unobstructed line of sight to the satellite for it to work, so it's probably a bit more sketchy than Iridium. It's not supposed to work, but I've successfully sent and received SMS from my Iridium phone while inside buildings with wood roofs, at least while the satellite I was connected to was directly overhead.
This talks to the same I-4 series satellites that various BGAN products connect to (Thrane-Thrane, NERA, Hughes etc), but at a much lower data rate (2.4 kbps voice codec). As far as I know there is no way to use it for low rate data services like you can an Iridium phone, which works functionally similar to a 2400 baud modem with v.42bis compression and a 1250ms delay.
Personally if I had to choose between this and Thuraya, I'd go with Inmarsat just because their teleports for EMEA services are located in the UK, not the UAE. Etisalat, Du and the UAE government engage in some pretty screwed up behavior, telecom-wise.
http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cg ... 2073253697
http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cg ... =952626619
