For those areas where there’s no cell service and you might need help or just tell people you’re OK, there’s the Spot Satellite Messenger.
If you look at the major cell-phone carriers’ coverage maps you’d think the United States was pretty well served. This is far from the truth. There are thousands of locations all over the the country — for example, my kitchen — where cell phone coverage, to use a technical term, stinks. Actually the lack of cell-phone coverage in my house is simply a function of T-Mobile‘s rotten service in my area more than anything else.
As annoying as this is, it’s not going to result in a life-threatening situation unless the house VoIP service is down (always possible) and I’m serving poorly prepared fugu (a lot less likely).
But what if I was a few miles down the road in one of the canyons? Out there, only maybe 15 miles from what we shall call civilization, I could be attacked by a feral pig (of which I am told there are a large number, and they are apparently cranky beasts).
So, there I could be, lying on the ground having been gored by a porcine assailant and no cell service available to call for help. What to do?
First, I would reach into my backpack, grab my laptop and use it to fight the pig off. When that was done I would get out my Spot Satellite Messenger, press the 911 button and wait for help.
This is possible because the Spot Satellite Messenger, as its name implies, uses the Globalstar Low Earth Orbit satellite network to relay one of three status messages (“OK”, “Help” or “911”) along with the coordinates of the device. The built-in GPS is claimed to be accurate to around 20 feet.
I must mention here that, yes, this is the Globalstar that has had problems with its very expensive satellite phones, annoying customers. The Spot Satellite Messenger apparently doesn’t share those problems because communications are one way and are said to be 99.4% reliable (apparently the 0.06% failure is due to the Spot device not being able to adequately “see” the sky).
Anyway, the Spot device is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, orange with black rubber bumpers, and has a belt clip. It weighs 7.3 ounces, is driven by two lithium batteries and is waterproof for 30 minutes at one meter. It will not, however, work underwater.
On pressing one of the buttons a message would be sent to my account on the Spot Web server and, if it was a 911 request, would be routed to emergency services. For the other two messages, the status would be converted into customizable text of up to 115 characters and sent to one or more e-mail addresses or to one or more cell phones as an SMS message (assuming the recipients aren’t in my kitchen without cell service writhing on the floor in agony with fugu poisoning).
The Spot costs $170, and basic service, which includes unlimited use of the 911 feature and the OK and Help messages (which both provide position data), is $100 per year.
The upgraded service allows your progress to be plotted on a Google map every 10 minutes for an additional $50 per annum. You can also take out a $100,000 rescue insurance policy for $7.95 per year if purchased at sign up, otherwise it will set you back $150 per year.
Overall I am impressed with this device. It works and appears to be very reliable. Moreover, if I am ever attacked by a pig I will consider the pricing to be very reasonable.
