The iPhone’s satellite SOS arrives at the borders of Italy

There are certain things that theory alone isn’t enough: you need to see them in practice to realize if it’s needed. Like sudden braking, the electronic control makes the car safe: until you’ve tried it you don’t realize how useful the function is. In December it will be possible to make a small experiment: for all users of the latest iPhone models (the 14 series, which was presented after the summer, and with iOS 16.1 installed) the emergency service will be active without telephone or WiFi coverage in some areas of Europe. In particular, from December the service will be active in France, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. In practice, if you find yourself outdoors and in trouble, perhaps for a retort on a mountain path or a flat tire in the middle of a plain with no cell phone coverageyou can activate Apple’s satellite SOS service.

Since the telephone does not depend on the nationality of the user’s operator but on where it is used, this means that in some areas where Italians often go, for example for skiing in the French Alps or bordering the Côte d’Azur but also for hiking in the German Black Forest or in the highlands Scotsthe service will be active and usable in case of emergency by anyone with an iPhone 14.

What is a satellite phone used for?

The experiment will be to understand its effectiveness and above all its actual usefulness: do you feel safer if you know that, even in the middle of the bends of an alpine path without a signal, if you twist yourself you can call for help and you don’t run the risk of staying out all night?

At the time of its presentation, during the keynote held in Cupertino in September, to us Europeans it seemed a service especially suitable for the USA and Canada: after all, North America is by definition boundless and often uncovered spaces. And those who have to ask for assistance in those parts are better off relying on satellite services. On the contrary, Italy seems to us to be overcrowded: staying without a signal in the city happens only when buildings have too thick walls or the wrong operator is used. What is satellite alarm for?

Instead, Apple is seriously convinced that it is needed. So much so that, to carry out this emergency service via satellite, he has proven to believe in it a lot and want to invest even more in it. The company has become a pioneer in technology that uses signals weaker than those of specialized satellite phones, and is still in its infancy. The signal to be sent to the satellites is so weak that the device must be well oriented and in any case allow only a few bytes of information to be communicated.

Half a billion investments

In addition, Apple, to be able to make the system work according to its standards, has invested $450 million through its Advance Manufacturing Fund to push the implementation in satellite service providers’ ground stations and data centers (Apple’s collaboration is with the Globalstar constellation) and has even equipped control centers that serve as “translators” of the precompiled text messages sent by smartphone for emergency services which instead require verbal telephone communication. Apple, in short, it also pays hundreds if not thousands of people to receive the messages and call the emergency number and alert him by reading the information necessary for the action.

Faced with this considerable effort, as we said, many wondered if the service was not, precisely, just American-centric. Designed for those who get stuck with the car in the middle of the Nevada desert, to be clear, or in the endless plains of the Midwest, which are predominantly without telephone coverage and with a population density lower than that of Western Sahara. Now, however, faced with the possibility of verifying whether an out-of-town holiday can turn into a bad adventure here too, the idea of ​​having an extra card in the phone to ask for help takes on a different light. It is needed in the Alps, perhaps, or in the mountainous areas of our Apennines, and in any case in all those suburban areas where staying with a flat tire or lingering on a mountain path after sunset or with the sudden arrival of a downpour can transform a pleasant moment into a dangerous situation.

The experiment to do, therefore, is understand if Tim Cook’s bet actuallywho is convinced that smart phones should serve to improve people’s lives also by protecting them, rather than just taking selfies to be distributed on social networks (which, moreover, keeps it at bay with the privacy protection that Apple prides itself on), whether or not it is a winning idea.

Alpine Rescue data

Does it make sense to maybe buy the cheapest model of Apple smartphones, the iPhone 14 which costs 1,029 euros in the basic version, to have this little extra security? For those who usually go to the mountains, even just to ski on weekends or to go for rides with an electric mountain bike, there is one fact to consider. A few days ago the Alpine and Speleological Rescue released the data of the interventions carried out in 2021, which was a record year, despite the restrictions of the pandemic: in fact, there were 10,730 total interventions rescue, that they helped 10,615 people in mountainous or inaccessible environments. Not all in areas without a signal, but most of them yes and in any case in a “slice” of the Italian territory which has a considerable complexity also for telecommunications.

And not only trekking and hiking enthusiasts are involved: the activity with the most accidents (47.8%) but even mountain bike lovers, especially electric oneswhich required almost 1,300 interventions last year (+15% compared to 2019).

The data is heavy and from December we will understand whether to have a phone in your backpack capable, in the event of a flat tire or other accidents, of sending an SOS via satellite can also be a useful resource as Tim Cook says or if it’s just marketing.

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