Stranded on a desert island; lost in the forest; stuck in the snow; injured and unable to get back to civilization. Human beings have used their ingenuity for millennia to try to signal for rescue. there’s been a progression of technological innovations: smoke signals, mirrors, a loud whistle, a portable radio, a mobile phone. With each invention, it’s been possible to venture a little farther from populated areas and still have peace of mind about being able to call for help.
But once you get past the range of a terrestrial radio tower, whether it’s into the wilderness or out at sea, it starts to get more complicated and expensive to be able to call for rescue. In the next year or so, it’s going to become a lot simpler and less expensive. Probably enough to become ubiquitous. Hardware infrastructure is already in place, and the relevant software and service support is rolling out now.
It’s been possible for decades for adventurers to keep in contact via satellite. The first commercial maritime satellite communications was launched in 1976. Globalstar and Iridium launched in the late 90s and drove down the device size and service cost of satellite phones. However, the service was a lot more expensive than cellular phone service, and not enough people were willing to pay for remote comms to be able to overcome the massive infrastructure costs, and both companies went bankrupt. Their investors lost their money, but the satellites still worked, so once the bankruptcies were hashed out they fulfilled their promise, as least technologically.
On a parallel track, in the late 1980s International Cospas-Sarsat Programme was set up to develop a system for satellite aided search and rescue system that detects and locates emergency beacons activated by aircraft, ships and people engaged in recreational activities in remote areas, and then sends these distress alerts to search-and-rescue (SAR) authorities. Many types of beacons are available, and nowadays they send exact GPS coordinates along with the call for rescue.
In the 2010s, the Satellite Emergency Notification Device or SEND device was brought to market. These are portable beacons that connect to the Globalstar and Iridium networks and allow people in remote areas not only to call for help in emergencies, but also to communicate via text messaging. Currently the two most popular SEND devices are the Garmin inReach Mini 2 and the Spot X. These devices cost $400 and $250 USD respectively, and require monthly service fees of $12-40. For someone undertaking a long and dangerous expedition into the backcountry, these are very reasonable costs, especially for someone who does it often. But for most people, it’s just not practical to pay for and carry a device like that “just in case.”
In 2022, the iPhone 14 included a feature that was the first step in taking satellite-based communication into the mainstream. It allows iPhone users to share their location via Find My feature with new radio hardware that connects to the Globalstar service. So if you’re out adventuring, your friends can keep track of where you are. And if there’s an emergency, you can make an emergency SOS. It’s not just a generic Mayday: you can text specific details about your emergency and it will be transmitted to the local authorities. You can also choose to notify your personal emergency contacts.
Last week, at WWDC, Apple announced the next stage: in iOS 18, iMessage users will be able to send text messages over satellite, using the same Globalstar network as its SOS features. Initially at least, this feature is expected to be free. With this expansion, iPhone users will have the basic functionality of a SPOT or inReach device, without special hardware or a monthly fee.
SpaceX’s Starlink, which first offered service in 2021, has much higher bandwidth and lower latency than the Globalstar and Iridium networks. Starlink’s current offering requires a dinner plate sized antenna and conventional networking hardware to enable high bandwidth mobile internet. It’s great for a vehicle, but impractical for a backpacker. However, SpaceX has announced 2nd generation satellites that can connect to 1900MHz spectrum mobile phone radios, and T-Mobile has announced that it will be enabling the service for its customers in late 2024, and Apple, Google, and Samsung devices are confirmed to be supported. Initially, like Apple’s service, this will be restricted to text messaging and other low-bandwidth applications. Phone calls and higher bandwidth internet connectivity are promised in 2025.
The other two big US carriers, AT&T and Verizon, have announced they will be partnering with a competing service, AST SpaceMobile, but it’s unlikely those plans will come to fruition very soon. Mobile phone users outside the US will also need to wait. Apple’s Message via satellite is only announced for US users, as is T-Mobile’s offering.
So if you’re in the US, and have an iPhone, or are a T-Mobile subscriber with an Apple, Samsung, or Google device, you’ll soon be able to point your phone at the sky, even in remote areas, to call for help, give your friends an update on your expedition, or just stay in touch. Pretty soon, Tom Hanks won’t have to make friends with a volleyball when he crash lands on a deserted island, at least not until his battery dies.
What I’m worried about is who will pay for this kind of roaming, especially in the EU where roaming is now free (and the relevant setting is enabled in most phones, even for data).
Americans are used to paying for roaming even inside their own country, but in the EU there were never roaming charges inside a country’s borders and recently inside EU borders.
kurkosdr,
Here in the US our last mile ISPs haven’t kept pace with the rest of the world. When you normalize for cost, ours our extraordinarily high. Competition has proven successful at breaking down cost barriers for those fortunate enough to have a choice, but unfortunately our corporations managed to pass laws in many states protecting themselves from new competition. Such laws are completely asinine, but they have been extremely effective at killing off competition for many consumers. And it’s no secret that many of us in the US live under monopolies and duopolies.
After being bought out by altice, our local broadband monopoly imposed very significant upload speed cuts on internet packages across the board….
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548774/optimum-altice-reduced-cable-speeds-upload-throttling
The 35mbps upload speed we had for over a decade with the most basic internet package is now reduced to 5mbps. The 35mbps we had is only available in the 1gbps package going forward, which isn’t even available in our area. Meanwhile we’re paying over a hundred/mo and short of very expensive mobile/satellite there’s zero home internet competitors. Even if we were willing to pay more for satellite internet to bypass the cable monopoly, the satellite internet services are oversubscribed and don’t have nearly as much bandwidth available as physical networks do. Meanwhile the 5G carriers are nowhere close to deploying “mmwave” frequencies for the ultra high bandwidths they had promised and failed to deliver.
In short, not only do US consumers have to contend with some of the highest internet prices in the world, but for all the money we are paying our internet service is relatively poor. Even affordable internet subsidies for the poor got killed.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24168853/pandemic-internet-subsidy-affordable-connectivity-program-ending
Unfortunately this is what happens when you let for profit corporations run things they way they want to.
Nobody has paid for roaming within the US in a long time, and my T-Mobile plan lets me roam in Canada and Mexico for free. I think that AT&T and Verizon require buying a special Canada and Mexico pass. Tmobile also already allows me to get 5GB of data and free texting in almost every country, so if they’re going to start offering texting via satellite, it’s natural that we’d expect it to either also be free or cost the same no matter where you are. I hope that it is always free (included in the premium tier plans) but I would gladly pay $.10 to be able to send the occasional text message when I’m out of terrestrial antenna range.
David Adams,
I think emergency situations are a very good use case for satellite communications. And you are right when you said people don’t want to pay a high monthly fee for a service they don’t intend to use regularly “just in case”. So if this could be bundled along with their their normal bill it could provide useful emergency services. Whether it’s itemized or not, many of do pay a 911 fee for something we rarely ever use, but it’s there for everyone to use just in case. And it doesn’t have to be broadband or anything either, the bandwidth needed by text messages is absolutely minuscule.
Assuming all of this can be made to work reliably, and hopefully be available to everyone without any new subscriptions, then I think it’s a good idea.
My son was interested in one of the emergency beacons, like the SPOT or inReach, so I’d done a little bit of research on them, which prompted me to write this article. But we came to the same conclusion: After paying several hundred dollars for the device, it’s hard to justify the monthly service expense unless you’re working as a lumberjack or river guide or oil field roughneck and you’re out in the back of beyond all the time.
Wow, I just took a look at the pricing. Well, I have to agree with your conclusions.
findmespot.com/en-us/products-services/spot-x
Nothing about it seems to sensible for basic users.
$200 device cost (on sale) is too high.
$15/mo is high. for the cheapest plan.
$30 activation is high. Obviously the intention is to punish users who don’t want/need the service every month.
Only 20 text message in the basic plan is too low.
That’s really not affordable for the little you get in return.
As a regular Iridium user, this is an amazing development. I wonder if it will work globally, or if it will be georestricted to the carrier’s coverage map.
Some countries send authorities when you connect to a satellite constellation that is inconveniently not under their control.