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Comment by lucaspiller | Hacker News Reader

When you make an emergency call on a GSM network it specifially uses the tower which provides the best signal, which may be on a different carrier. In most countries you don’t even need a SIM card to make an emergency call.

My point is there is no technical reason why the emergency sevices couldn’t put up towers for 911 calls only.

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I think the argument is that it's not economical to set up towers only for emergencies. Technically no problem.

I wonder if S&R planes are equipped with a device that can simulate a cell tower. If/when it detects the lost party's phone, it can provide a search radius and potential comms channel (depending on signal strength).

Basically a Stingray device for geolocation purposes instead of surveillance.

That requires an S&R plane to actually be in the air. That is usually not the case when somebody has a problem.

I have a GPS beacon that sends a distress signal to a satellite which then may a cause a plane to get in the air.

> I have a GPS beacon that sends a distress signal to a satellite which then may a cause a plane to get in the air.

I've been wondering, are there any such satellite-based distress-signaling tools that only charge you for the service if you actually use it? I imagine most people would gladly pay through the nose for actual emergency services, but would otherwise not desire to make a single cent in monthly payments for a service they don't use...

I wonder if the perverse incentive of "well, it's not serious to pay $10k for a rescue, I'll just struggle through" would lead to worse outcomes.

Any idea what the monthly costs are on those things? If it's like $20/month, and they have 100k subs, with maybe 50 annual rescues, you're looking at $40k / rescue? Numbers totally made up, was just looking for a feel on how they stack up.

You just made me find the answer to my question actually.

I had looked up the costs a few days ago and found something along $50-100/month for the subscription (Iridium).

But in the process of searching for that again, I learned that the term to search for is "personal locator beacon", and apparently those do operate exactly like I mentioned! https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/personal-locator-bea...

Thanks for the nudge :)

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