this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Apple
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I can't imagine that Apple pays $10k per-incident to allow their phones to connect to a third party's satellite network. As you point out, rescue services are a different story, but that's independent of whether you contact them via satellite or standard cellular.
They're probably not paying per incident, because that model doesn't work. They're paying per authorized device.
A dedicated satellite device like inReach is $144/year for unlimited SOS and 10 standard text messages
I think you’re overestimating the cost of data
Less than "unlimited" isn't meaningfully cheaper to provide. It's $144/year and not thousands per use exactly and exclusively because you can't buy it when you need it.
If you could buy it on demand, 99.999% of revenue disappears because there's no reason to pay for a subscription, and you have to massively raise the price per use for the service to break even.