The Iridium satellite phone

Oh, yes, your mobile phone is beautiful. Lovely colour too. Hilarious little tune it plays when you get a call. But ask yourself these important questions: would it work in the Gobi Desert? What about at the North Pole? Could you buzz your voicemail from a yacht in the middle of the Atlantic? Can it even get a signal in west Mayo or south Fermanagh?

Face it pal, your mobile is just a pretty piece of home-town junk. It only functions wherever your network provider has bothered to sign a roaming agreement, and even then you usually just get basic service - minus all the good features like caller ID - and you still have to pay an exorbitant fee for the privilege.

If you were a real high-flyer, a truly global-reach executive, you would already be signed up for Iridium. This is the company that has put 66 satellites in low-orbits of Planet Earth, just to ensure that special people like you can remain in touch, always.

Sure, the Iridium has roaming agreements, and you can use your phone on regular GSM networks, but whenever those pathetic, land-based systems fail to meet your exacting, executive standards, just look to the sky.

Iridium handsets start at around £2,000, and the satellite calls themselves, depending on use, cost around £3 a minute.