For years this used to be “simple”: you bought a data pack of $40/80/160, which got used up at the rate of $1/minute on the dial-up or $5/MB on GPRS.
Also the entire balance got confiscated after 3/6/12 months (respectively). This is obviously an outrageous ripoff but it is still vastly cheaper than Iridium which was at least 10x more expensive than even the Thuraya dial-up rate of about $1 for 50kbytes i.e. $20/MB.
Then they moved to a model where the usage pricing was the same but they no longer confiscated the balance as above. They merely stole about $37 from it every year, so if e.g. you bought the $160 topup you were good for four years of very light usage.
I have just texted 151 to my phone to check the balance, and it says
“Your balance is $191.11 and account is valid till 13/5/2014”
What does the 13/5/2014 mean? Have they gone back to confiscating the whole balance? This is clear as mud. I don’t want to lose the $191 on 13/5/2014…
I have now emailed Thuraya to explain this.
