Ok. You ask a good question. My answer is that it depends. My background is having been out cruising for a couple years in the Caribbean and Central America. There are better ways not to mention much less expensive, to get weather and communicate with others on shore than SSB. But if you want to communicate two ways with fellow cruisers in the various cruising nets, I know of no substitute.
I did not want to spend the time and money to install SSB in my boat for a system that works only some part of the day, if you're lucky. I carried a little portable SSB receiver that allowed my to hear the folks on the nets and Herb and others on weather, but I got all my written weather and charts through my SKymate system. Skymate allows you to email, reports your progress to others, and receive GRIB and all other files from NOAA and you pay by volume. The unit costs about $1000, is simpler to install than a stereo and I had all needed for about $30 a month uses almost no electricity and a little green light goes on when someone emails you. Worked fine all the way to Panama and both Pacific and Atlantic sides for email and weather info Also, sat phone will work (Iridium, Globalstar did not work much at all) for all this much more reliably than SSB as I am sure you know.
So if you want to chat with fellow cruisers when way off shore or dialogue with the weather volunteers during those few hours it actually works in a day, you want SSB. But I got along fine without it and always had multiple options for communications that worked any time, BTW, Sirius worked great for keeping in touch with news and music all the way to Colombia.
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