First cellphone to satellite phone call made in SA

The first telephone call made from a cellphone to a satellite phone in South Africa was made between the Vodacom and Immarsat networks on Friday 8 May. Gustav Engelbrecht of Grintek, local service providers for Immarsat, said South African usage was between 300 and 500 minutes per day, at a unit cost of R24 per minute. "Up till now you couldn`t call an Immarsat subscriber from a cellphone in South Africa, but the 0987 dialling code was finally enabled on Vodacom`s network on Friday," Engelbrecht said.