Admittedly, Globalstar was not reliable anywhere when the S-Band amplifiers started crapping out on them in 2007. They had to maneuver good birds to cover the open coverage spots and this created coverage issues. No doubt, they were looking toward losing as few customers as possible and Alaska likely received the short end of the stick. A lot of people left Globalstar and never looked back. I can't say that I blame them. I was more of a business rather than survival user, so I could wait for a good bird to give me 20 minutes of talk time. And the pricing plans could not be beat.

Now, the bad birds have been replaced and the constellation is complete again. I have not experienced any issues since mid-2012. However, I rarely get north of the Canadian border.

Iridium's constellation does have better coverage at the poles, but Globalstar seems to have pretty decent coverage further north with the new birds. It would be interesting to see if anyone has done any tests in 2013 in Alaska. Again, I would not blame anyone for dropping Globalstar during the problem years.

For me, I am not planning on going that far north anytime soon and the Globalstar wi-fi puck seems to be offering speeds several times faster than Iridium. If pricing between the companies remains consistent, the Globalstar product will be about a quarter of the cost.

I'm going to wait and see after both products are out, but I am not going to count Globalstar out because of their unfortunate past.