Satellite Communications
[Music] when it comes to the world of satellite communications choosing between the different options out there can be quite confusing even with a seemingly endless amount of product reviews that are paid for by the companies themselves and that's kind of an issue almost all of the product reviews out there on these devices are from the perspective of a couple of different kinds of people such as the hipster backpacker who wouldn't survive a disaster even with the gps communicator or the weekend traveler aka small business owner who does a product review because they are trying to sell the device to you also most actual reviews of satellite communications technology seem to all kind of fall into the same category of going to some remote and scenic location turning the device on sending a message and marveling that it works in other words a lot of people are impressed with the overall technology of satellite communication or even the physical device itself which is perfectly fine satellite communication in the palm of one's hand is very impressive to say the least and all of the satellite communicators currently being sold on the market right now will function they will work depending on what you're trying to do with them but therein lies the problem trying to match a technology to a capability and not the other way around a lot of people purchase these devices and pick a monthly subscription plan with the goal of making it fit into their adventures people buy a gadget and then try to figure out a use for it and even more dangerously some people change their risk management priorities because they think that having a magic sos button in their pocket makes them invincible we think that a better thought process would be to figure out what capabilities you need and then choosing a technology that fulfills this requirement with as little modification to your mission and your risk as possible and these days when everything is more expensive and people are struggling financially we think a different approach is needed especially when it comes to purchasing expensive products such as these so today we're going to cover a few different options for satellite communications from a perspective of our unique needs now let's begin by talking about why we individually or as an organization need satellite communications capabilities as one can probably imagine we are not the typical north face wearing soy latte swigging ultra light eco hippie backpackers when we go out into the wilderness areas where there are no communications we aren't going there to align our chakras or become one with mother earth we have real work to do training setting up observation posts building off-grid shelters cashing supplies all the while writing and creating content for you guys and gals out there and in addition to making sure that things are okay back on the home front where civil unrest has become a part of our daily lives so we need a communications plan that will function all of the time if we cannot get a message back home within a pre-established communications window we don't sit back and say oh well that gives us more time to unplug unwind and enjoy nature nope we stop what we're doing and we work our way down the plan to make these communications happen also all of us tend to travel internationally a decent bit mostly to nations and locations that aren't particularly friendly i personally have used my satellite communicators in conflict zones more times than i have for hiking or backpacking which is something that's not exactly advisable for reasons we'll get into later but the bottom line is that sometimes we are on the grid but the grid itself is not suitable in a lot of countries one cannot simply call 9-1-1 or their version of it and even if a country has a national emergency phone network that actually works you might find that calling the local government authorities to your exact location might not be the best option for survival which leads into something that's important to point out because it will affect every device that we're going to talk about today which is the concept of what constitutes an emergency in ye oldie worldly times back up just a couple of decades ago before satellite communicators were mainstream we had devices like the ultra simple personal locator beacons basically it was just a small device that when you hit the sos button that signal was transmitted to a satellite which beamed it down to a rescue center where the staff then contacted the appropriate agencies of whatever country or location that you are in so one might be able to see the problem with these early devices they are purely binary either you are having a great time and everything is perfect or it's a life or death emergency that will require the military police fire department's coast guard and everyone else to come get you well sometimes we face issues that are not life and death but they could be if left unaided for too long so for us this is a huge criteria being able to send messages requesting help but not necessarily pulling out all the stops and calling in the cavalry and finally the last consideration and one of the major reasons that we tend to use satellite communicators in on-grid locations is privacy all modern smartphones are built from the ground up for very specific purposes the same devices that were created to connect people in ways never done before are now essentially mini surveillance devices in your pocket the primary function of most smartphones has become to spy on you ounce for ounce and gram for gram smartphones are the most sensor dense intelligence collection platforms on or off the earth and this isn't just something to be concerned about when it comes to general privacy either these days merely having a smartphone presents a clear and present danger to the average citizen remember people have been arrested solely because their cell phones pinged them being in the general vicinity of a significant event i don't know about you but i would hate to have been just a dude walking his dog past the us capitol building on january 6th wondering what the hubbub is all about because if i had done that my smartphone would have dutifully reported back my entire existence to national intelligence agencies and i would have been a part of several investigations now it is true that satellite communicators are not secure either national intelligence agencies can break and crack pretty much anything that has a battery however when it comes to tracking satellite communications we're talking an entirely different set of sensors it would take a lot more than your local police department with a stingray device to even know that your satellite communication took place actually we're not aware of any local or state police agency that can actually intercept satellite communications at all only the highest levels of nation-state level intelligence agencies can intercept these communications but even then the crowd of people that can do this stuff within those agencies is very very small think about it this way what would you rather use to communicate with a device that is being used by literally everyone from walmart and google to every single law enforcement agency in the united states to spy on you or a device which is still being used to spy on you but only a couple of national level intelligence agencies possess the means to do so point is the likelihood of incidental and accidental collection in the average american city is much much lower with satellite devices obviously if you don't want to be spied on by the nsa fbi or cia then don't use any device that has a single line of code or takes a battery that's the general rule of thumb that we analysts live by anyway nothing digital is secure not even your alarm clock or electric toothbrush but when it comes to everyday life in a world of mass surveillance i myself feel a lot more comfortable walking around with my satellite communicator out listening for messages from my family and friends while my smartphone lives inside its faraday bag only coming out if i get a message on my satellite communicator that requires better communications so for me personally and for most of our staff here satellite communicators are not just a tool for the backcountry but an everyday tool for reducing digital signatures in urban environments and having a bit more privacy in a mass surveillance state obviously as satellite communication devices become more and more mainstream the levels at which satellite communications are spied on will become more and more localized but for now this seems to be a pretty good option for at least limiting the total number of agencies that can spy on you so for people who have our specific needs which is increasingly including the average person living in the united states there are a few different options for satellite communicators so let's work our way down the list and talk about some of the considerations for each style of device and to begin with we will be getting the elephant in the room out of the way the satellite phone sat phones are the ultimate cream of the crop when it comes to off-grid communications there is currently no technological device that tops the sat phone when it comes to capabilities and here's why sat phones don't just make phone calls nowadays most of them can send text messages send emails and even surf the web albeit using what's basically a dial-up connection and an interface that looks like the very early days of the internet for some people like us this is a necessity sometimes there's nothing that can replace a phone call and if you engage in risky travel plans in nations or locations that aren't super friendly to include the united states a sat phone is going to be a life-saving piece of gear because you can place a phone call to anyone in the world not just an emergency coordination center and one can easily go down the list of scenarios in which this is far preferable to hitting that sos button on a beacon and one of those scenarios is war if you take a look at the terms of service for most satellite communicators on the market you will find that that magic sos button doesn't work if you're in a certain blacklisted country or in a location that the company that you have service through defines as a conflict zone technically the sos button does work and you will be able to use it to talk to whatever emergency recovery center you pay for usually it will be the iercc but in any case you can contact them with the sos button if you are located in say syria or iraq but they are under no contractual obligation to come get you your policy is null and void if you are expecting rescue services in these locations which kind of makes sense seeing that they are purely a civilian peacetime recovery agency and even then they just contract out the actual rescue to local authorities in your area that's not to say that the iercc specifically will leave you out to dry they will do what they can to help but in these unique non-standard situations there might not be much they can do other than calling the local us embassy and handing things off to them better than nothing but the way things are diplomatically these days good luck but with a sat phone you can actually call a physical person without going through the emergency center and without potentially contracting a several thousand dollar rescue bill when all you needed was a tow truck or directions to the nearest urgent care there are also a lot of situations in which a sat phone is more of a lifesaver than a device with an sos beacon when a person hits that sos button help is not instant it takes several hours or even days away from you depending on where you are but a sat phone could be used to make a quick phone call to an entity that can help you much more quickly for instance let's take the lost hiker scenario if a person is hiking in the back country and gets a bit turned around they can hit that sos button and help will be on the way it will take a while and will probably end up costing a lot of money for the rescue but it will work however if that same person had a sat phone they could call the park ranger office and talk to a ranger in seconds to let them know that they're lost and since all sat phones also give you your gps coordinates you could easily tell the park rangers exactly where you are and they can hop in a truck or a gator and come get you this could be very handy for medical issues if you get bit by a venomous snake for instance you might not have time to wait the several hours it's going to take to come get you if you hit the sos button also what if you are not the one in need of emergency services all of us here have at some point come across a stranded hiker or somebody in need of help at some point or another so it would be great to have a phone that can be used to call for help or a tow truck or even to hand off to a stranded hiker so they can call home and let their friends and family know that they are safe also when it comes to the sos button on your own device some companies are really good about not billing you for a rescue if you hit your button on your device in order to rescue someone else but this is kind of a legal gray area and why i absolutely would hit my sos button to save someone else i might come across i would much rather use a sat phone and spend a couple of bucks on a phone call and avoid that potential issue that is often forgotten about when it comes to wilderness rescue who gets to pay the bill so satellite phones have a lot of benefits and like i mentioned they are arguably the best and most reliable communication device that a person can use to talk to anyone on earth at any instant but there are a lot of cons and the main con for buying a satellite phone is the massive cost sat phones are expensive most sat phones are well over a thousand dollars and that price doesn't include this year's shiny new model no most phones on the market right now are designs that are decades old also most sat phones make old-school nokias look like iphones when it comes to the on-screen options and overall layout of the device so it's pretty depressing to buy a brand new sat phones that cost thousands of dollars only to get a giant brick that looks like they made one design back in the 1980s and just stuck with it and on top of that the monthly fees are excruciatingly expensive as well for instance i personally pay about 60 dollars for my monthly satellite phone plan which includes a us phone number for free which is pretty important and for that price i get about 60 minutes of prepaid talk time that's right 60 minutes for the whole month of course i can go over this limit for a rate of about a dollar 25 a minute but considering that most normal cell phone plans are for unlimited data calls and text messages the off-world option of satellite communication costs a lot more by comparison but also by comparison it is impossible to calculate the real value that a satellite phone can have we know how much it costs we know the exact price of these devices and these plans so we can calculate how much it's going to cost but what's really impossible to know is how much a phone call is worth when you really need to make it such as in an emergency too often we try to equate the price or cost of a technology with its value but based on how many lives have been saved with satellite communications it's not really possible to adequately convey the value of such devices in an emergency they are invaluable or even not really in an emergency situation but in situations where several events occur in which the capability of making a phone call in an off-grid location would be really helpful if you frequently find yourself in situations like this or you place great value on this capability then a sat phone would be a great option for you now up next are the devices at the extreme end of the spectrum the plbs or personal locator beacons these devices are most definitely old school in terms of the more modern options that i will discuss in a moment but old school does not necessarily mean that they do not still have a use personal locator beacons are very simple devices and they have only one job to do these are meant to be thrown into a backpack or vehicle and forgotten only taken out when there is a life or death emergency as a result most of these devices have non-user replaceable lithium batteries which is fine for long-term storage but not so great for constantly testing your device before an outing but these devices do not need a subscription you simply sign up and register your device and that's it no monthly service fee or anything other than the original purchase price which when plbs were popular years ago this was quite preferable to the only other alternative at the time the satellite phone also most plbs don't use the same constellation of satellites that other systems use plbs have their own network of satellites called the kospat sarsat system this was an international collaboration between the united states and russia and a few other nations back in the 1980s with the goal of providing an international search and rescue notification system for all kinds of industries and individuals also most plbs emit a radio homing beacon that can be intercepted by search and rescue aircraft to better direction find you once they get close remember this is older technology and back in the day these satellites and devices didn't have the capability for data so all they did was receive the radio signal from your device triangulated it using other satellites and let the emergency center know that your beacon serial number was activated in this general area since these satellites are government owned and operated the initial rescue efforts are also government controlled an important distinction from other options on the market for instance if you activate a plb within the united states the first agency that would be notified that you need help is the us air force who will then hand off your beacon activation to state governmental rescue agencies or coast guard officials if you are offshore this is a big difference between some of the other options out there that we will discuss next so plbs have their place a device that has a constellation of satellites solely dedicated to search and rescue is pretty handy for redundancy but these days we have other devices that offer different and much more capabilities for around the same price technological improvements and new satellite constellations means that today we have a huge category right in the goldilocks zone between sat phones and plbs satellite communicators these devices fulfill the gap and capabilities between having just a life and death emergency button on a plb and having the high cost of a sat phone and for that reason these devices have exploded in popularity so much so that there are now many different devices in this category when compared to their old school competitors currently there are really only two major companies offering these types of devices garmin and spot which both offer totally different devices an array of devices all of which offer different capabilities so much so that each one of these devices deserves its own video but for now we're sticking with the theme of matching capabilities to a technology so at the bottom end of the satellite communicator range are the one-way only communicators these devices are most closely recognized under the spot brand as the spot company got started with offering these types of devices usually quite small the old school original spot device hasn't really changed that much in terms of functionality over the years which is perfectly fine considering its intended use these devices are meant to be a simple cheap solution to satellite communication in that they don't offer that much they of course have the obligatory sos button which all satellite messengers have these days but also a button that you can press to let people back home know where you're at and that everything is going okay a little check in button the latest generations of spot devices also have a very interesting feature of a help button which spot calls the sov or save our vehicle button think of this as a satellite based roadside service and recovery button if you break down beside the road and you don't have cell reception you can push this button to summon help but instead of going to an emergency center which dispatches rescue personnel this goes to a call center that locates you and calls a tow truck for you of course this requires a small monthly fee of at this moment three dollars but it's an important feature that is absent from spot's competitor garmin another feature that isn't talked about a lot when it comes to spot devices is their concealability spot devices are very small and can quite easily be concealed on one's person no matter what a person is wearing so if you are at the beach or a swimming hole where you're wearing nothing but a swimsuit clothing which is notorious for not being able to conceal or carry really anything at all you can still carry a small satellite communicator like the spot gen 4 and no one will ever notice that you have it and speaking of the spot gen 4 specifically is one of the most waterproof devices there is not water resistant waterproof so i actually take mine in the water with me all the time tucked and tethered away unnoticed in a zippered pocket and considering that with tracking turned on you could literally leave this device on 24 7 tracking your position every hour and just replace the extremely common aaa batteries once every couple months sure this is a very specific use and probably not needed for most people but if you find yourself prioritizing compactness and concealability over two-way communication these types of devices offer some great capabilities however the most common satellite communicators on the market right now offer two-way communication the first devices that did this were made by delorme which was quickly bought out by garmin who took that technology and now puts it in at least half a dozen different devices likewise the other main company that does this is spot again who recently came out with their sort of competitor to the garmin's inreach devices the spot x now inreach and spot devices don't exactly replace plbs the result is the same you can get rescued with both but the chain of events that occurs in the emergency process is very different what is unique is that these styles of devices allow two-way communication which is great because it's vastly cheaper than a smartphone but still has the capability of sending messages that are not of an emergency nature and this is great because it's not just a cost saving thing either in the not so hypothetical scenario of getting stuck in a downtown area because you weren't able to get off work early enough to avoid a riot and the cell phone network is either down or under extreme amounts of surveillance and not an option i personally would feel just fine in most cases with pulling out my satellite messenger and sending off a quick message to the family letting them know what's going on that is an excellent use for these kinds of satellite messengers that is not being talked about at all in the backpacking world because the market for these kinds of satellite messengers is again targeting the group of people that based on their beliefs is actually more likely to start a riot rather than try to save someone from a riot i of course don't intend to paint everyone with broad brush but let's be honest the overwhelming majority of backpacking and outdoor companies are absolutely marketing to people who tend to have a particular political ideology so people everyday citizens that have particular needs can absolutely use these technologies in today's crazy world if you were to tell me that i could purchase a device for a quarter of the cost of a modern smartphone that can't be intercepted or even jammed by my local police department which has no less than three stingray devices permanently being used in my location oh and the monthly plan for such a device is about 15 bucks a month i'd say sign me up immediately now granted one would have to be quite naive to think that the national level spying agencies aren't tracking your every message with one of these devices which leads to our next point of note anonymity it's not possible to register a satellite communicator anonymously actually i take that back technically it is none of the satellite providers that i myself have service with to include sat phone providers asked for any identification when signing up even though they probably were supposed to so in theory you could use a fake name and a burner prepaid visa card to sign up for such services but we would strongly advise against this if you only have one device for life-saving purposes remember the sos function on your beacon is tied to an insurance policy an insurance policy which is sure to be cancelled in the event that you have to use that sos function and the people at the company discover that you used a fake name to sign up and sort of on the lines of anonymity we come to another major consideration or questions that must be asked when it comes to satellite communications is whether or not these devices will even actually be allowed to work in a total or near total societal collapse while pushing past the gaping chasm of unknowns regarding such an event one little tidbit of information is of note in the case of such an event and that is the nature of the first strike attacks and denial of services that will occur should a global war or total societal collapse situation happen remember the us military restricted normal gps receivers abilities to actually have the most accurate positioning data for decades fearing that terrorists or more accurately foreign governments would be able to go to walmart and buy a garment off the shelf and put that gps chip in a missile not bad logic on the surface but considering that russia also built a gps satellite constellation and the fact that this wasn't ever really a genuine threat because anyone who was able to build a gps guided missile certainly had enough outside help to get whatever equipment they needed the pentagon quietly did away with this policy a few years ago but we must never forget the nature of that relationship it is only through the grace of the military-industrial gods in the pentagon that we are allowed to actually even use generic gps satellites in the first place so the logic continues that if one can giveth one can certainly taketh away and considering the dod's recent interest in things like gps spoofing and other space-related weaponry and also considering the current federal governments and pretty much every politician's aspirations of totalitarianism becoming a more real threat to average citizens every day it does stand to reason that one of the more important technologies that is going to get locked down for military or government only usage is satellite communications but that would have to be a truly insane world ending situation because shutting down a satellite constellation has much more consequences than banning an individual from the entire internet or even shutting down an entire website for an entire country not every single person with power in this country and certainly not every single agency within the federal government has a handy encrypted satellite radio in their office a lot of official military and diplomatic communications goes over the iridium network through devices that are registered to seemingly normal everyday citizens so even though the fear of the capability for government agencies to shut down satellite communications is a genuine concern the likelihood that this would happen is also at this point extremely remote too much of the heart and lifeblood of our nation relies on satellite communications from all international shipping and oil production to clandestine military operations the federal government is cripplingly reliant on not just the military side of satellite communications but also the recreational consumer side of things which is something that we mere peasants can take advantage of and that's really what satellite communicators and sat phones can be used for in the context of our modern world yes these devices are intended for a specific set of uses and of course are not as capable as most other communication devices like smartphones however considering the options that are currently out there and considering the comparatively cheap costs of these devices and plans when compared to the capabilities that they provide the field of satellite communications is something that in our opinion is a relatively untapped resource for citizens who are beginning to realize that having their entire lives on a smartphone is perhaps not a great idea i personally use my satellite communication devices every single day for most communications of course i would not expect everyone to rush out and do the exact same thing but i also think that sharing my and our collective experiences when it comes to alternative communications has value and with more and more satellite constellations getting put into orbit the future of satellite communications is much much brighter than it was when the technology was first developed again this of course means that as these things get more popular things like mass surveillance and privacy will become more of a concern with everyday satellite communications but for right now we live in that perfect goldilocks zone in which the devices and technology is reliable enough to fit into one's daily communications needs but also not popular enough to warrant your local health department from using it to spy on you so while we're in this sweet spot for however long it lasts satellite communications are a great way to be more prepared a little more private and have capabilities when others around you do not so if this is something you're interested in stay tuned for our future videos on the subject we will definitely be diving deeper into the world of communications as we move forward and if you haven't already done so check out our previous videos on various communications topics which are arranged nicely in playlists on our youtube channel and thank you again to all of our supporters who make content like this possible until next time fight in the shade [Music] you