Family rescued from wildfires thanks to iPhone’s Emergency SOS via Satellite | Hacker News Reader

Family rescued from wildfires thanks to iPhone’s Emergency SOS via Satellite

9to5mac.com

61 pointscarabiner18 comments

This is so cool. Amazing work Apple. Truly amazing work. Everyone who works on iPhones and the Emergency SOS feature should be incredibly proud.

This is just so extremely cool and makes me happy to see within my lifetime.

Btw, which satellites are being used for this functionality?

Apple initially wanted to use OneWeb but for (hopefully) obvious reasons the current implementation uses Globalstar instead.

I have no idea why it would be obvious?

I assume the parent means "obvious to the GP, who seems familiar with satellite networks". Still, the parent's ominous style of writing is probably better reserved for a forum where more people would understand their unspoken words.

I also didn't know, some Googling led to this being the likely reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb#2022_Russia_controver...

I assume they are referencing the fact that Oneweb's network architecture is based on 3GPP standards that allow the network to be operated with capabilities matching those of terrestrial carrier-grade cores. There's in theory a lot less friction to using OneWeb for backhaul supporting 'off grid' LTE/5G RANs than there is using something like Starlink.

It's the wireless band

https://xkcd.com/2501/

It's incredible satellite phones have become so accessible. Sure, they've existed for decades, but very few people actually prepare themselves for emergencies like these so the people that get surprised and need them most often don't have them.

I can't wait for this to come to Android in a short while.

Starlink already announced they're working with various telcos around the world to support mobile-via-satellite in a more handset vendor agnostic way.

Makes me think, could this scenario happen in the continental US? I mean could a large earthquake or wildfire knock out cell service for SF or Seattle? Maybe a hurricane affecting a Florida city? Or are there enough cell towers outside of the area to make it unlikely? We think of this feature for wilderness rescues, but this is the first time I've heard of it used in a disaster affected urban area.

When we had the Nisqually 6.8 earthquake back in the early 2000s, all the circuits went busy immediately. Cell phones and land lines were all busy. Nobody could get through to anybody. There wasn't really much infrastructure damage, and it wasn't a deadly quake by any means.

> could this scenario happen in the continental US?

I don't see why not.

We certainly have wildfires in various places on the mainland. There are also a number of potential causes of very large natural disasters lurking out there - from the Yellowstone supercaldera to the New Madrid earthquake zone, to the La Palma tsunami.

I have friends who live in Cupertino, and when an ISP like Comcast goes down in one or two neighborhoods for maintenance, the cell network (not even Comcast but like AT&T and such) also effectively goes down because everybody and their mother starts tethering or otherwise using their phone data significantly more than normal.

Sure, lower Manhattan lost power & cell service during Hurricane Sandy back in 2012. People were split between lining up around the block for one of the few remaining payphones, and trying to find a spot with line of sight to Brooklyn

Don't forget about tornadoes. This year they've done $520 million worth of damage, and killed 95 people.

You can do a demo on your iPhone, instructions here -

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT213426#:~:text=Try%20the%2...

Save you having to work it out while you are panicking or got blood loss etc

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