bose/x
Which network were you on, and was it contract or payg?
I suspect yours is an old phone. Which model is it? The technology moves fast in this business. Also most of the older phones have no doppler correction so don't work well in moving vehicles.
Globalstar is all but dead now.
Iridium offers pole to pole coverage but is expensive, with stupid PAYG pricing, so for a European application one would not use it; Thuraya is a lot better.
I have an offer of a new Thuraya phone from a dealer, so thank you but I will want to test a current product.
A TAF etc is under 1k of data which even at a fraction of 2400 baud is only seconds.