Today I used the satellite emergency feature (which launched in Australia in 2023) on my iPhone for the first time.
I was the celebrant at a wedding in Nichols Rivulet in the Huon Valley. Zero mobile service. An elderly guest tripped on an extension lead on wet grass and needed an ambulance. No one could call 000.
So I pulled out my iPhone 17 Pro and used Emergency SOS via satellite.
Here’s what I learned about the service:
- It doesn’t connect you directly to emergency services (at least not in Australia). It connects you to a relay centre. You answer a series of questions via tap-to-select options, then they contact 000 on your behalf. It’s a middleman, not a direct line.
- Each message takes about 45 seconds to send. You need a clear view of the sky, and the phone guides you to point it at the satellite. Messages are capped at 160 characters. In an emergency, 45 seconds per message feels like forever.
- It still got the job done. The ambulance arrived swiftly and attended to her while the ceremony was happening. She’s ok now apart from not feeling great.
- My GPS co-ordinates and my personal Apple Health identification and contact data were sent to the relay centre which would be helpful if the emergency were more dire.
- Without this feature, someone would have had to drive out and away to find reception and call for help. That’s a meaningful difference.
Worth noting: in Australia we only have the satellite emergency SOS feature and also the ‘update Find My’ feature so far. You can’t text anyone via satellite like you can in some other countries - it’s emergency services only.
The updating your location on Find My is good if you’re 100% ok but you want your partner or friends to know where you are, even if you can’t be actually contacted.
If you’ve got an iPhone 14 or later, it’s worth trying the demo in your settings before you actually need it. You don’t want to be figuring out how satellite messaging works while someone’s on the ground.
My friend Jaylan adds:
I have been taking Queensland Triple-Zero Emergency calls for the last 10 months; and only last week I experienced my first Apple Emergency SOS via Satellite call.
Someone with the feature stopped at the scene of a crash on a rural road with no cell service. The contractor at the relay service tasked by Apple to action these SOS via Satellite was very friendly and had already gathered most of the information I had needed. Starting with the GPS coordinates but also some traffic crash specific questions.
For any question she didn’t have the answer for, it was as easy as sending a text via satellite to the persons phone. Their responses were quick! I liked the fact that the operator had ‘Delivered’ receipts like we do in iMessage.
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