Seldom is the discussion at the Hut so passionate as when we are discussing sports or politics, but today the heated debate centered around - of all things - cell phones vs. satellite phones. It started with a casual comment made by Lou about sometimes having to wait for his mobile phone to find the signal from the satellite.
As is my habit (most find it annoying, I'm sure), I corrected Lou and said it's a cell phone and it was grabbing a signal from the nearest cell tower, rather than a satellite phone. Lou immediately dug in for the fight, as Peter, Joe, and I all tried to convince him that his Virgin Mobile phone was indeed a cell phone and not a sat phone. Lou said it that it indicated in the owners manual that it was a satellite phone, but we argued that it was impossible.
I have now been tasked with finding proof that his is a cell phone and not a satellite phone. I'm dubious that even with such proof Lou will be convinced, but maybe he'll humor us.
With no success on the Virgin website (although I doubted I would find a page that explicitly said that their products are cell phones and not sat phones), I turned to Wikipedia to flesh out my somewhat limited knowledge of the sat phone market.
For my evidence, I first present the physical appearance of the phone. Unless Lou has obtained one of the prototype sat phones which do not have a large external antennae, his phone will look approximately like what is pictured above. Such a phone, the Iridium 9555 retails for $1595, and Lou's legendary penny-pinching would surely not allow him to spend that kind of money on a phone.
Secondly, the cost to make calls from a sat phone range from 15 cents per minute to $2.00 per minute, and to receive calls the cost is anywhere between $3-$14 per minute, something Lou would never abide.
Thirdly, I discovered that all sat phones are issued with a "virtual country code", ranging from +870 through +882, which would precede the actual phone number. Lou's mobile phone number was the traditional seven digits plus area code.
Lastly, unlike the sheer number of cell phone companies like Virgin Mobile, T-Mobile, AT&T, Alltel, Sprint, etc., etc., there are only a handful of satellite phone networks servicing the planet. There are basically two companies providing low earth orbit satellite service: Globalstar and Iridium. There are a couple other companies providing geosynchronous service, and that's it. I did not see Virgin Mobile as one of the providers on the list from Wikipedia.
In conclusion, I am sorry to confirm what Peter, Joe, and I knew, but Lou's phone is indeed a cellular phone, not a satellite phone. In the parlance of the Tobacco Hut, Lou spent a lot of the afternoon in the barrel today, and we hope he enjoyed his time there! Perhaps if Barry had been there today, we would have been debating A-Fraud's - er, A-Rod's - use of steroids and Lou would have escaped unscathed.
To smoke today, I chose an Erik Nording unfinished freehand and my go-to favorite, Tinder Box Reserve 1928. It has a rather large bowl, and I was still smoking it by closing time. I haven't smoked the pipe too often, and I think it still needs a little more breaking in, but it was still a quite enjoyable smoke.
Until next week - cheers!
- Bob
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