Apple’s Satellite Services Expand to Offer Roadside Assistance
How It Works & What It Costs
By Jesse Hollington
A special thanks to iDropNews for republishing permission. Images provided by iDropNews. Be sure to visit them at idropnews.com
There weren’t too many surprises during yesterday’s Wonderlust event, thanks to the active rumor mill — which actually got a lot of things right this year about the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro lineups. Nevertheless, Apple still had a few tricks up its sleeve that nobody saw coming.
One of these was the expansion of its satellite services to go beyond only providing help in the most serious, life-threatening emergencies. Launched with last year’s iPhone 14 lineup, Emergency SOS via Satellite is a groundbreaking new feature that has already helped a great many folks reach out to emergency services when they’re off the grid with no cellular or Wi-Fi coverage — from calling in water bombers to douse a Canadian wildfire, rescuing a family from the Maui wildfires, or saving college students from a frigid canyon.
Emergency SOS via Satellite was launched in the US and Canada last year, but it’s since expanded to 12 other countries on three continents, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, and the U.K. Yesterday Apple announced that it’s coming to Spain and Switzerland later this month, where it will undoubtedly be helpful to snowboarders and skiers adventuring in the alps.
Of course, you’d expect a satellite-based feature to have global coverage, but the limitation here isn’t the technology. The satellites are there, but Apple still needs to get the emergency services infrastructure in place so that first responders can properly handle calls that come in via satellite.
This leads to the next phase of Apple’s emergency satellite features that the company introduced yesterday.
“[Emergency SOS via Satellite] is having an extraordinary impact, including helping first responders rescue people after accidents and natural disasters. And users have let their loved ones know they’re safe by updating with Find My via Satellite, in places from the Shetland Islands in Scotland to Mount Wellington in Tasmania." — Deniz Teoman, Apple VP of Hardware Systems Engineering
