Palmer Station Voice and Internet Communications - April 2002 
(provided as an informal overview by Johan Booth, 
Science Technician at Palmer Station)

Voice:  There are three ways to communicate from Palmer 
to the world:

1)  InMarSat.  Still the best quality, and still the
most expensive, something like $3 a minute.  Also still
the only way to call in and have a decent expectation
of getting an answer.  Which you can get at any time
of day or night.

2)  Iridium.  Somewhat voice-distorting, and subject to
drop-outs, but "free" for something like 3000 minutes per
month (ie, there's a cost that we've sunk).  Residents
are cleared to use it for personal calls for up to 15
minutes each week at no charge, and it can be used for
business calls any time the InMarSat clarity and
reliability isn't needed (or isn't deemed worth $3/min).

3)  IP phone.  When the Internet is solidly up, this is
a decent low cost (costs as if you were calling from
Miami, I think) way to place a personal call if you're
over your 15 minute Iridium allotment for the week.

I *think* that you can call in on any of these, but
InMarSat is the only one that gets any use, since the
others could ring and ring and ring and no one would
know it.

Internet:

1)  And only 1).  LES-9, maximum of 38.4kBPS, two "windows"
each day of approximately six hours each.  Roughly half
of each window is pretty reliable, the other half is kind
of in and out.  Email can get through it, but data
transfer or Web surfing (if you have lots of pages to
load) is a pain.

(a) group of carpenters are at work (now) outside on the footers
for a huge (10 meters?) radome to house a new antenna
as part of the new Palmer Earth Station.  Since I first
started hearing about this in 1994, it's kind of neat
to see actual construction.  The plan is for the
facility to be complete by October, I think, though as
always that'd subject to materials, workers, planning,
etc, so it should not be relied upon.  I cannot give
you specifics on the resulting capability, but it will
be 24 hours a day, and it will be at least 128kBPS,
possibly more.  At one point they were expecting to 
start at 128 but have the ability to go higher if the
need materialized.

I don't think that the voice capabilities will change
EXCEPT that IP telephony will suddenly become a much
more reliable option.

  If you need more information than this, or if you want
to be sure that you have the RIGHT information, the best
person to contact is Lora Folger (lora.folger@polar.org).
Lora's the IT supervisor for Palmer.