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Posted by Bill S on March 31, 2008 at 12:28:21 pm EDT
In reply to Help! I’m lost/injured! Rescue me! - a preliminary report posted by Bill S on March 28, 2008 at 9:04:15 pm EDT

Otto -
Both of the two major satellite phone systems (Iridium and GlobalStar) are still in serious financial trouble (there are some other systems that are mostly aimed at marine use). Iridium (the one I had some involvement with before I retired) has full global coverage, as you point out. I had use of Iridium when I was in Antarctica and a friend who doing a lot of mapping in Antarctica uses it regularly. However, Iridium is more expensive to use, even for the digital service (which is a lot less than the voice service for both Iridium and GlobalStar). Iridium is also a bit more of a technical challenge. Because of these two factors, SPOT chose GlobalStar's digital system to keep the price down ($150 for the device plus the annual subscription, which can add as much as another $150/year, depending on what services you want). Iridium is also better-maintained, since they receive a fair amount of support through government contracts.

Another system which I am not reviewing, ACR, makes use of the maritime satellite communications systems and a consortium of governmental agencies (US Coast Guard and other country equivalents, other governmental agencies with SAR responsibilities) has full global coverage, as do a couple of other true EPIRB devices. These systems generally do not have "OK" and tracking functions, but are intended only for search and rescue, emergency only.

The two major attractions of SPOT are the low cost and the capability of sending "OK", "Help", and track messages, in addition to the "911" emergency message. Note that the SPOT 911 message goes to a commercial SAR coordination agency, not a governmental agency - something which turns out to be somewhat controversial (not a topic for discussion here, since I want this to stick to the technical aspects).

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