What You Need to Know About Apple's Emergency Satellite Feature for iPhone 14

[Andronicus]

Pretty neat, Apple employees won't need it because they stay at home all day but nice for those that do

I’m not an apple employee but I work from home too. 😊 it’s the future, baby!

 

[I7guy]

Any phone that chooses to include a satellite feature with any sort of paid service should be required to be able to access 911 without any subscription, yes.

Okay, imo you are cherry picking. Make any device that can access emergency satellite communication have the same requirement.

It’s pretty silly that anybody is defending anything to the contrary.

What’s silly is treating vendors unequally.

Somebody could die while holding a tool capable of calling for help in their hand just because they aren’t paying a subscription,

And that applies to every single vendor.

that isn’t right.

I agree, let’s have these laws be equal.

Very few people are going to pay a subscription on the off chance something goes wrong,

So then regulate the industry and abolish the fees.

and people can be in situations where they are miles from cell service without totally going out of their way to get into this situation. (Ex: a road near where I live has a 3 mile stretch with no cell phone service, and it is a route to the biggest nearby town… if you broke down in the middle of that and were severely injured…)

I agree. Regulate the industry.

If Apple didn’t want to deal with these questions and implications then maybe they should not have spent years of R&D to put this feature in their phone with the intent to charge for it. If Samsung or Google follows suit I will say the exact same thing about them.

I’ll repeat regulate the industry. The flip side is that apple thought this through and people who want this will have to pay.

 

[g000]

I agree with this. I was not saying whether Apple is right or wrong to exploit peoples fears to sell products. Just stating the fact that it's what they're doing and that it's a change in marketing strategy compared to years ago. My earlier comment referred to an article with the headline, "Apple used to sell wonder, now they sell fear." It's true. Now a lot of their marketing is about heart attacks, car crash, stranded in the mountains, etc. Maybe they are already showing restraint and could manipulate people even more if they wanted.

Sorry but that logic seems rather absurd. From your flawed reasoning, everyone out there is marketing stuff out of fear, so why even single out Apple. Supermarkets sell groceries because of people’s fear of getting hungry, companies marketing toothpaste due to fear of people getting cavities, selling cars due to fear of people not able to get to where they need to get to, advertising vitamins because of fear of getting sick, bottled water bc of fear of getting thirsty, i can go on and on but its kinda pointless

 

[zach-coleman]

Okay, imo you are cherry picking. Make any device that can access emergency satellite communication have the same requirement.

What’s silly is treating vendors unequally.

And that applies to every single vendor.

I agree, let’s have these laws be equal.

So then regulate the industry and abolish the fees.

I agree. Regulate the industry.

I’ll repeat regulate the industry. The flip side is that apple thought this through and people who want this will have to pay.

You’re acting like you’re giving me gachas as if I don’t fully agree with you. The situation is slightly different as somebody happening to carry around a sat phone that has no service would be much rarer than their smartphone, which almost everybody has, but I agree. If you have a device which could theoretically access 911 it should be able to regardless of if you pay.

 

[I7guy]

You’re acting like you’re giving me gachas as if I don’t fully agree with you. The situation is slightly different as somebody happening to carry amount a sat phone that has no service would be much rarer than their smartphone, which almost everybody has, but I agree. If you have a device which could theoretically access 911 it should be able to regardless of if you pay.

Either regulate the industry or not. If not, However understand it’s the responsibility of the owner to pay the fees. They have two years to figure out if they want the service no or not. If apple is forced to give away the service they might terminate it.

Is that better?

 

[g000]

Any phone that chooses to include a satellite feature with any sort of paid service should be required to be able to access 911 without any subscription, yes. It’s pretty silly that anybody is defending anything to the contrary. Somebody could die while holding a tool capable of calling for help in their hand just because they aren’t paying a subscription, that isn’t right. Very few people are going to pay a subscription on the off chance something goes wrong, and people can be in situations where they are miles from cell service without totally going out of their way to get into this situation. (Ex: a road near where I live has a 3 mile stretch with no cell phone service, and it is a route to the biggest nearby town… if you broke down in the middle of that and were severely injured…)

If Apple didn’t want to deal with these questions and implications then maybe they should not have spent years of R&D to put this feature in their phone with the intent to charge for it. If Samsung or Google follows suit I will say the exact same thing about them.

By that logic one would have to mandate as well all satcom providers to provide free 911 service to anyone who owns any type of satellite handset like Garmin Inreach or SPOT etc. why any satcom companies would spend hundreds of millions to put satellites out there so they can provide free 911 service is beyond me. If one were to make this a rule, i guarantee there would be no commercial satellites out there in space today. There seems to be a lot of entitlement sentiment, someone gives something for free and ppl think they deserve to get it for the rest of their lives

 

[zach-coleman]

Either regulate the industry or not.

Regulate the industry and treat it just as a cell phone using a cell phone tower as far as dialing emergency services go. This is one of the purest examples of what taxes are for.

 

[tivoboy]

it's more likely Globalstar is the ones that want to charge for it than Apple.

Apparently, Apple is PAYING Globalstar for this service for the first two years.. it’s probably not too much, but will most likely end up in a $100-$150 annual charge TO apple after 24 months..

That is just ACCESS to the service and capability though IMHO, NOT the recovery service charges. That would be additional as expected. but, I do think that Apple MAY offer some direct access to an insurance policy plan for recovery services.

 

[g000]

Apparently, Apple is PAYING Globalstar for this service for the first two years.. it’s probably not too much, but will most likely end up in a $100-$150 annual charge TO apple after 24 months..

That is just ACCESS to the service and capability though IMHO, NOT the recovery service charges. That would be additional as expected. but, I do think that Apple MAY offer some direct access to an insurance policy plan for recovery services.

“today Apple announced a free messaging service with Globalstar. What’s most interesting is how little Apple is paying, total revs of $185M-$230M in 2023 implies Apple is paying around $70M-$110M (or a bit more if duplex revenues go to zero) https://investors.globalstar.com/node/14431/html
By 2026 this increases by 35% to a max of $310M. So Apple’s payments, including ~$40M-$50M for capex reimbursement, are unlikely to exceed about $200M pa. The read across to SpaceX-TMUS is that for US service (where TMUS brings the spectrum), TMUS payments might be only ~$100M pa”

Source

https://twitter.com/x/status/1567662810473062400

 

[I7guy]

Regulate the industry and treat it just as a cell phone using a cell phone tower as far as dialing emergency services go. This is one of the purest examples of what taxes are for.

Apple has staffing under the heading of relay centers. This is not a pure example of what taxes should pay for because our tax dollars will not reimburse apple when regulations force apple to provide this device for free.

If one regulates apple to provide this service for free a not so imagined response would be to shut down the operation.

 

[tivoboy]

“today Apple announced a free messaging service with Globalstar. What’s most interesting is how little Apple is paying, total revs of $185M-$230M in 2023 implies Apple is paying around $70M-$110M (or a bit more if duplex revenues go to zero) https://investors.globalstar.com/node/14431/html
By 2026 this increases by 35% to a max of $310M. So Apple’s payments, including ~$40M-$50M for capex reimbursement, are unlikely to exceed about $200M pa. The read across to SpaceX-TMUS is that for US service (where TMUS brings the spectrum), TMUS payments might be only ~$100M pa”

Source

https://twitter.com/x/status/1567662810473062400

That’s about exactly where I put it for annual revs to GSAT.. (disclaimer, shareholder from .60$) which if you think about it is actually quite a LOT of revs for what GSAT is going to provide. It’s just NA/CA enablement for now, probably stays that way for a year and I would bet that we see LESS than 1 in 500 phones sold in USA/CA actually ever trigger an event. So, it’s quite a bit of margin to GSAT (and validation) so I continue to hold.

For apple, they get to test drive the service, service provider and customer experience and usage before making any further commitments.

GSAT does not offer great GLOBAL coverage (actually they are one of the worst for total global footprint), so I think if this is something that Apple is going to try and offer/enable worldwide they are going to need to partner with other providers or get GSAT to increase their coverage footprint - which I’m not sure they are able to do regulatory speaking.

 

[cateye]

Apple has staffing under the heading of relay centers. This is not a pure example of what taxes should pay for because our tax dollars will not reimburse apple when regulations force apple to provide this device for free.

If one regulates apple to provide this service for free a not so imagined response would be to shut down the operation.

I don't have an opinion either way in this public/private service debate, but it's worth noting that Apple chose not to work with the International Emergency Response Coordination Center (IERCC) which normally handles relay duties from many commonly sold PLBs and satcom devices with SOS features. While the IERCC is run like a 9-1-1 call center (meaning, without regard to to what device was used to issue the SOS), it is actually owned and operated by Garmin. Before Garmin bought it, it was an independently-run organization not affiliated with any government.

As well, the individuals or organizations that respond to an SOS request can be a mix of volunteer, government agency, and private rescue firms, depending on your location, the extent of your emergency, and yes, your ability to pay for the response, either personally or via insurance.

That 9-1-1 works as it does as a public amenity maintained through tax dollars is somewhat of an anomaly.

 

[robgendreau]

I don't have an opinion either way in this public/private service debate, but it's worth noting that Apple chose not to work with the International Emergency Response Coordination Center (IERCC) which normally handles relay duties from many commonly sold PLBs and satcom devices with SOS features. While the IERCC is run like a 9-1-1 call center (meaning, without regard to to what device was used to issue the SOS), it is actually owned and operated by Garmin. Before Garmin bought it, it was an independently-run organization not affiliated with any government.

As well, the individuals or organizations that respond to an SOS request can be a mix of volunteer, government agency, and private rescue firms, depending on your location, the extent of your emergency, and yes, your ability to pay for the response, either personally or via insurance.

That 9-1-1 works as it does as a public amenity maintained through tax dollars is somewhat of an anomaly.

I noted that as well.

There are a lot of uncertainties going forward on the infrastructure to handle this—not only the ability of Globalstar to handle traffic (and Elon or Iridium or whoever else if it rolls out worldwide), but also the dispatch part of the problem. GEOS (IERCC) also sells rescue "insurance" so maybe that will be an offering in the future to help pay for it.

Judging from the comments, lots here don't seem to know much about the complexity of arranging rescue, and aren't aware it's not just like a call to 911. And as far as arguing for gov't support, I get it. But if that concerns you, get on your local emergency services to just support regular SMS to 911...at least in the US, we can't even do that. Nor can I even get just emergency roadside service that way. Apple's new service might be one of those instances where a new tech "solves" the problem of messy old tech by just leapfrogging it, but we'll see.

 

[zach-coleman]

Apple has staffing under the heading of relay centers.

The relay centers are only required because not every 911 center takes text messages, this was said in the keynote. The 911 systems just need to be updated, which would presumably be included in whatever hypothetical law legislates this.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I’m surprised this isn’t just an included feature on all iPhones. In two years from now there will be stories of people who died in remote situations because their emergency SOS coverage lapsed because Apple wanted to charge extra. It will be in very poor taste for Apple to charge extra for an emergency feature… I don’t believe they’ve ever done this before.

Seems simple enough to me, just like a cellular account. No one faults AT&T when there is no phone respionse when someone tries to use their cellphone on an account that has been canceled due to nonpayment.

That said, you are 100% right about the basic morality involved as well as the business optics. Apple maintains far above average corporate ethics, so my guess is that two years from now (when the first sat coverages start to expire) Apple will provide a large after-the-emergency-usage fee that users will have the opportunity to accept.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Garmin has similar device for many years now. So you can simply do a google search and see how people have been dealing with it. Or go to REI I’m sure they can tell you a thing or two.

Garmin is not Apple. The sheer user volume that Apple brings (think about how Apple Pay evolved) changes everything by at least an order of magnitude, probably more.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I was holding back from buying the Garmin device so I could know what apple offers. It’s much inferior to garmin. Garmin uses a much better iridium network that has greater coverage and doesn’t require you to point the sky certain angle. It also allows you to message anyone in the world and receive text message from anyone. It’s more expensive but if those features are important , then you have the choice. With apple you can text ur friend socially in the middle of desert or ocean.

Except that Apple is Apple and has access to engineering and UI economies of scale that Garmin can only dream of. November 2022 you might be correct that it is inferior to Garmin, but Apple will likely blow past Garmin in 2024 if not 2023.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I saw one article that says, "Apple used to sell wonder, now it sells fear."

I haven't thought of it that way, but there is some truth to it.

So Apple adds a cool safety feature and some folks call out Apple as "selling fear." Nonsense !

 

[cateye]

Except that Apple is Apple and has access to engineering and UI economies of scale that Garmin can only dream of. November 2022 you might be correct that it is inferior to Garmin, but Apple will likely blow past Garmin in 2024 if not 2023.

I know this is MacRumors and there's this constant emotional knee-jerk need to defend Apple above all reasonable expectation, but as a counterpoint, I'd also remind you that Apple requires a far greater return on investment on their products as a result of their size. Think about how a company like Sonos can thrive solely on producing smart speakers and related items. trillion dollar Apple couldn't find room in its budget to keep developing and selling the original HomePod. Why? Because it wasn't successful... enough. No one would question Apple's ability to pour resources into something like satcom. The question is whether it matters enough to generate ROI for their "top of the bell curve" approach to marketing and user acquisition.

Yes, Apple's enormity makes it a formidable force capable of changing entire markets. But it's a bit like trying to drive a giant SUV in a very tight parking lot—it can also be a liability that faster moving competitors can leverage to serve more granular niches better.

 

[jgrove]

This is a great addition and will save lives, as long as it’s not abused

 

[aajeevlin]

Garmin is not Apple. The sheer user volume that Apple brings (think about how Apple Pay evolved) changes everything by at least an order of magnitude, probably more.

I doubt it. When people find out how much you will be charged for the rescue. The notification might be free, I hope people here don’t think the actual rescue mission is going to be free as well.

 

[I7guy]

The relay centers are only required because not every 911 center takes text messages, this was said in the keynote. The 911 systems just need to be updated, which would presumably be included in whatever hypothetical law legislates this.

As I said, if this is a subscription service in the long run, I can see Apple shutting it down, rather than having the government forcing Apple to provide it for free. People have to be responsible.

 

[stormbeast]

Isn’t it ironic that the Chinese version of the 14 line up doesn’t have Emergency SOS via Satellite?

 

[olavsu1]

Gotcha. I got that info from the macrumors feed, that's why i thought it was a chat with emergency services that gets relayed to an actual rescue org. That makes sense though.

The naval school teaches, what this stuff is and how it works.

 

[SFjohn]

Here’s a surprisingly comprehensive article on it! Keep in mind that survival in a high speed car crash depends on the driver wearing their seatbelt and the airbag deploying! Both of these together reduce the g forces experienced by the driver tremendously, but wouldn’t change the experience of the watch on their wrist

The Physics of a High-Speed Crash: 70 MPH vs. 85 MPH

So, Texas wants to raise the speed limit to 85 mph. What do I think? Well, to tell you the truth, I usually drive 5 mph under the speed limit. I change this driving habit when my wife is in the car. Then I go the speed limit. But the real question (actually there are […]

www.wired.com

Thanks for trying, but it’s not quite what I’d hoped for. An article thats a “thought exercise” about a spring car isn’t hard science, despite the amount of math used in this imaginary scenario. I was hoping you had a link to peer reviewed scientific study on actual car crashes, demonstrating the survivability of 256G forces over time. I remain skeptical, but still intensely curious.