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A comment on Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPhone 14 Pro for 2 years. Parent comment

Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by jliptzin on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @04:15PM (#32756149)
How large is the demand for something like this? Are tons of people really going that far out of range of cell signals?
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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by nicoburns on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @04:19PM (#32756203)
A lot of serious hikers use dedicated devices for this kind of functionality. It's expensive-ish, and the chance of needing it is small. But if you do need it then it could be an actual life-or-death situation, so it's worth it if you're out in the middle of nowhere regularly.
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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by reaperducer on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @04:37PM (#32756471)
How large is the demand for something like this? Are tons of people really going that far out of range of cell signals?

When I lived in the desert, the local newspaper regularly published stories about tourists getting lost/stuck/stranded and then dying.

Going by the newspaper accounts, I'd estimate at least a dozen people died in the desert each year, and that was just in my area.

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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by bombcar on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @04:59PM (#32756777)
The demand is enough that the govn't could pay Apple the whole cost of this program and save money on search and rescue just because "head to the location of the phone" is a lot easier than "carefully comb this entire mountain range".

And that's not even counting the lives saved.

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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by LorenPechtel on Thursday September 08, 2022 @02:36PM (#32769978)
I've never tried to total them up but I don't find that at all surprising. Tourists head out into the wilderness with no respect for what they're facing. They aren't carrying enough water, they have a breakdown, they're in deep trouble.

Here in Las Vegas we have a ring of mountains around the city--and virtually no cell coverage beyond that ring. Even within the ring the outlying areas are often shadowed out.

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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by snoopy_telex on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @04:25PM (#32756293)
For the first 10 months in 2020, the Adirondacks had 245 search and rescue events[1] and it's a fairly small park nationally. This could save a huge amount of park service resources if they could be given the GPS cords to go directly to rather then spend hours searching. Expand that nation wide, it's a huge public win, and a great safety benefit to the individuals to be able to get help as soon as possible if something happens.

I was unable to find nation wide stats on search and rescue events.

[1] https://www.adirondackexplorer.org/stories/record-number-of-...

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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by malfist on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @05:14PM (#32756988)
Honestly, yes. I'm from Kentucky, and if I go back home, there's very little cell coverage. Too mountainous, too few people. You can usually get signal if you climb the biggest hill, or go into town, but if you've injured yourself and need to call 911, those aren't ideal requirements.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of midwest areas that have a similar problem.

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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by jliptzin on Thursday September 08, 2022 @10:21AM (#32765911)
I agree this is a good feature, however it's 2022 and maybe the government should start forcing companies like Verizon to take some of the $50 billion in profits they make per year and build cell towers in remote areas even if it means they won't make a 1,000% profit from doing so?
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Re:Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPh... by kube-system on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @05:02PM (#32756826)
US national parks alone had 297 million visitors last year, and it's not hard to find areas without coverage in many of them. Many state parks also have tens of millions of visitors each year.

I have never not lost cell coverage when going on a hike in the mountains, and I only go on casual day hikes.

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