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May 5, 2022 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:02:15
Satellite phones to the RESCUE! Eric Talman and Mike Adams
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All right, welcome everyone to this special episode of Health Ranger Report.
I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, founder of Brighteon.com and publisher of NaturalNews.com.
As you know, I'm a prepper and a survivalist, and I recently went through a week of hell in Texas with rolling blackouts and frozen pipes and, you know...
Animals were dying all over the county.
It was horrible.
We didn't have any cell tower service, nothing.
Well, the company reached out to me after that and they said, hey, we could solve a lot of your problems.
Get you back online, get you emergency phone service, even when the cell towers are down.
That company sent me a sat phone that I absolutely love and they've become a sponsor.
So this is officially a sponsored video interview with one of the very few sponsors that I ever say yes to because, you know, very particular.
But this company's got solutions that can literally help save your life and allow you to be more mobile and more self-reliant as well.
So we're going to bring in Eric Tallman from the company, Satellite Phone Store.
The place to go to find out about this company is sat123.com.
S-A-T-1-2-3.
It rhymes.
S-A-T-1-2-3.com.
Check them out.
We're going to talk about this solution today.
And welcome, Eric.
It's great to have you on with me.
It's just awesome to have this solution.
You know, I'm glad you're enjoying it and you like it.
And I can't wait to kind of take a little deep dive and give people some good information about what choices may be out there for them.
Yeah, absolutely.
So let me just set the tone.
I'll start asking tons of questions and let you talk more.
I mean, like many people, I've been aware of satellite phones for many years, but my perception was always that, oh, they're really expensive, they must cost $1,000, and they barely work, and they disconnect all the time, and the audio quality is horrible, and you can never find a satellite, all that.
That was my perception.
And I found out that's not true at all.
So kind of give us the overview of the state-of-the-art technology today and why this thing works so good.
I was calling my mom just having a chat.
It was awesome.
It worked great.
Yeah.
So I think at our company, we've made satellite phones easy and affordable for everybody.
They used to be very expensive, per minute, or even just to buy the device, kind of crazy, over thousands of dollars.
We now have this thing where you can get it just like a cell phone.
So, you know, get it on a monthly plan type of thing.
So we made it easier, kind of remove that barrier to entry so everybody can have the safety and security of a satellite phone if they want it.
And it's not a smart satellite phone.
It is truly just a satellite phone, whereas you're just making phone calls, you're able to send text messages back and forth, have GPS, and have SOS capabilities.
But that's all it does.
That's its only job.
Now, describe where it works from in terms of where you can be physically on the planet and still use this.
Sure.
It's going to be global.
We have two different satellite networks.
My favorite right now is the MRSAT one.
That's the one that we sent you.
Those connect to geostationary satellites.
So directly from the equator, shooting out 34,000 kilometers, that's where the satellites are.
There's five of them all around the world.
No matter where you're going, you're going to hit one.
I like the geostationary satellites in MRSAT's network because as soon as you've got signal, it doesn't go anywhere.
Doesn't fade in and out.
Call quality is nice and strong.
Gets the job done.
So when you make a phone call from, for example, Texas, that goes up to the satellite, down to a ground station in Hawaii, over fiber, private lines, and then onto the public switch telephone network to terminate your phone call, wherever, whoever you're calling, cell phone or earphone.
That's kind of the path that it takes.
No, I was surprised.
I expected a lot more latency in the conversation, you know, because I've seen that with satellite internet before.
But I was surprised.
There really wasn't much latency.
It didn't really interfere with the conversation.
The cool thing, you know, MRSAT came to the satellite phone game last.
Iridia, the more popular network from Arizona, from the United States, has been there since the 90s.
So MRSAT came last, but what they did is since they used geostationary satellites, they're able to get the vocoder rate, the voice encoding rate, just a bit higher.
It kind of makes that latency less perceivable.
So you're looking at roughly 600 milliseconds round trip.
So there is about a half a second plus there, but when speaking clearly, it usually doesn't mess up.
Yeah, good point.
Now, by the way, I forgot to ask you just for background.
What's your position with the company?
Just so the readers and listeners know.
Sure.
I started as the website guy 16 years ago.
And that evolved into many different roles, and now I'm the vice president of the company.
Travel between the different offices, do trainings, do media, kind of educational stuff like this.
It's really my passion to keep people connected.
Yeah, I saw you doing videos.
You were in some kind of like rally dune buggy thing with satellite in the middle of a desert on some continent.
You're like Mr.
Adventure.
I kind of got blessed with this life for sure.
And a big part of that is not just, you know, when we take these sat phones out to the parking lot, oh, great.
But what happens when you take them 800 miles away from any cell phone signal?
And, you know, you learn different things going out in the field.
So, yeah, we go to rallies and different types of events, a little bit less because of COVID in the past year.
But we're still going out and working hard in the field and keeping our skills sharp.
Well, I want to ask you, I've got tons of questions for you, but the next one in mind is, so getting back to where people can use this phone from, they could also use it from, you know, the deck of a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, right?
I mean...
Yeah, the types of people who use a satellite phone a good amount before COVID was cruise ships and probably will be again soon, it looks like.
And that just makes it to where if you're sailing anywhere, you can pull that thing out and make a phone call to any destination in the world for one price.
So whether you're calling South Africa, United Kingdom, or United States, it's the same price per minute.
Yeah.
Well, let's talk about the price here for a second.
So essentially, you're offering this phone at no cost when people sign up for a plan.
Is that correct?
It's under $100 a month.
Yeah, you know, and we just took a play from the cell phone networks.
We realized it just makes it a lot easier to take a very expensive piece of technology and make it accessible to people.
So yes, you just pay a monthly fee of roughly $89.
That gives you the minutes that you need, the device, the plan and everything.
So it's an easy way to buy a satellite device.
So you get a certain block of minutes for each month that you're paying the fee.
Now, what happens if you don't use those minutes?
Do you lose them?
Uh, traditionally, yeah.
But, um, we also offer rollover, um, on our plans.
I believe it's five bucks a month and you can roll all your minutes over from month to month to month.
And we have some customers with thousands of minutes.
And then if a hurricane hits or something kind of tragic, then they know they don't have a big bill.
You know, wait for them.
They got all those minutes banked.
Right, because essentially with the amount of minutes that people get, the per minute cost is, of course, much higher than a regular cell phone, but it is satellite.
Cell phones, if you remember when cell phones used to charge you for minutes and text messages, and now those are kind of just unlimited.
Now you're just being charged for data.
So the satellite networks are about six years, seven years behind the cell phone network.
So you are getting minutes.
You can get roughly 150 minutes, I think, on that plan.
And the text messages are running 25 cents a text message for outbound.
Your inbound calls are free, though.
So a lot of customers get a USA number.
You can get inbound text and phone calls on that number right to your sat phone.
It's 150 minutes, roughly more than two hours, is enough for most people in any given month to use their sat phone and kind of get by.
Well, that was one of my questions.
So can you, I mean, you can receive calls with a sat phone, but obviously you have to be outside.
You have to have the antenna deployed.
You know, you've got to be connected to the satellite to get the call, obviously, right?
Yeah, sitting right there in your studio, you're not going to get a call on your satellite phone because it's tucked away without signal.
So a lot of people will get a sat phone just for glove box or safety means, you know, for that emergency.
But others are looking for like more of like a weekly or daily driver because we're constantly traveling on and off grid.
We have docking stations and I grabbed a couple of those here.
Just to show you, these docking stations allow us to put that on a car, a boat, a building, so you can use it while, you know, inside indoor or in the cabin.
So the docking station's a receiver, and then it transfers the call to the phone, or just how's that work?
It's an old-school dock.
Phone just goes right into the docking station, and it has an external antenna on the roof on the top of the car or the boat, and that allows the phone to operate.
We need to get you one.
I know you just got your sat phone.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're probably next on the list to get a dock.
Yeah okay cool because I do like to play with all this gear and then it helps me describe it to people but you know speaking of people so out of your customer base what are the main uses that people have for this or who who's the primary person buying this phone or or let's say the top five categories of people using this?
Man, we've got thousands upon thousands of customers.
I don't know them all, but I do know quite a few.
And I think, you know, everybody from just, for example, my mom and dad live in Florida.
Two years ago, Hurricane knocked out power and Internet here for almost 10 days, 12 days.
So I keep them with my mom and dad just so if I'm traveling or something like that happens, I know they got a line.
All the way up to people who are more adventurous, outdoors type people who want to be able to have a connection even when they're off grid.
To more of our businesses who really want it for every business continuity, redundancy sake.
Where all the kind of directors or, you know, key people in the organization can have one.
So if something really bad happens, we know that everybody can communicate and get on the same page quickly.
So that, we find, is a big need.
I would imagine, like, oil rigs and oil just drilling operations on land all over the world.
It seems like every one of those would have to have a sat phone.
Right.
Wildland firefighters, oil and gas type companies for sure.
The list just goes on and on.
Environmental cleanup.
You can't even begin to imagine all the different types of individuals, enterprises, organizations, agencies, nonprofits, churches, missionaries, everything that use these in some kind of capacity.
And I even heard from another person at your company that cell phone companies buy these for their technicians to work on the cell towers when the cell towers are down.
And actually at the cell sites, at the big switching facilities, they have a backup satellite lock, usually from us.
And we put them in, we install it, the dock that I explained to you goes in.
And if they have a large fiber cut or something serious, which we've seen recently, they use that sat phone to call out to let people know on the outside what they need to fix the problem right away.
So that's a key thing.
I think like a lot of Americans, I didn't have a good perception of how fragile the cell tower system really is.
So, for example, I mean, I just learned this during the Texas blackouts, but the cell towers all have backup batteries, okay?
So they say, well, they have backup batteries, what could go wrong?
Well, the problem is the backup batteries might discharge all their capacity in 30 minutes, but they might take 10 hours to recharge, okay?
So, when the rolling blackouts, which is what happened in Texas, it's off 20 minutes and on 10 minutes.
Off 20, on 10.
And that went on for days.
So the cell towers were only accessible for like 10 minutes for every half hour.
And you didn't know which 10 minutes it was.
So you were just screwed.
You know?
That's what happened to us.
Yeah.
And, you know, if you recall going to any major sporting event or any major concert where, you know, thousands plus people pile in immediately, the networks have to bring in what they call sell on wheels, which are, they call them cows.
They bring in these trailers with satellite antennas and more repeaters so that way they can handle the load.
So yes, there's a fine balancing act.
And when You know, things that are expected to be there, like power, aren't there.
Yeah, it doesn't take long before, you know, connectivity is very unstable.
Well, let's talk about bandwidth here for a second, too, because I live in rural Texas.
I'm on a ranch, and we also lost bandwidth.
Now, the way bandwidth is set up in many rural areas, but also in certain suburbs, is that it's not yet on fiber in the ground.
There are point-to-point radio towers that are basically on the same towers as the cell phone equipment.
And then there are backhaul providers like AT&T that will have a backhaul radio piping tons of bandwidth through there.
But then when that cell tower loses power, that internet goes down.
Yeah.
So you've lost your cell phone and you've lost your internet.
Maybe your pipes have broken.
Maybe somebody's freezing to death and you can't call anybody on a normal system.
Yeah, no, and that's the severity of a lot of scenarios that we hear every day, honestly.
So that's what makes the job so much fun, because you get to bring some connectivity to people who've felt what it is like to be without or planning to be prepared.
So for data, the satellite phone that we've been talking about is great information.
Product that allows us to have a voice line, a text line, stay secure.
But if I actually need to open my email, need to check my business, check on a few accounts, that's what we're talking about that we really need these days.
Broadband is not a want, it's a need in today's world.
So I got a couple terminals here I'll show you.
This one is called our 510.
So stepping up from the basic satellite phones...
This is the world's smallest portable satellite terminal that gives you a data connection.
So I'd say it's about the size of maybe a small iPad.
A few inches thick.
You have a kickstand.
You get an app for your phone.
We're outside.
Makes it very easy to...
Now we have a data connection about the speed.
If you recall what 2G, 3G cellular speeds were like, Yeah, back in 2006, I think, 7.
Then that's the speed that you're going to get on this, which is great for one to two people.
Check an email.
Yeah, you can even FaceTime on it.
It's a little grainy, but you can FaceTime on it.
I check my WhatsApp, my emails, all different types of email accounts and stuff, and I'm able to do my job.
And that tends to get me by for my 5-10 day trips where I'm really off-grid.
Now, does your local laptop computer, does it plug into it, or does it have like a Wi-Fi connection, or how does it connect?
Both.
So you get an Ethernet port there, USB to Ethernet, so you can do a hardwired connection and even put your own router behind it if you like, or if the thing broadcasts Wi-Fi by itself.
So it's a full satellite Wi-Fi hotspot.
So how hard is it to aim that antenna?
I mean, do you have to get exactly the right angle and everything?
I mean, three degrees.
I'm just kidding.
No, it's very simple, man.
We send people out every day doing this.
I've helped people do it from dugout canoes in the Congo.
And, you know, there's very rarely a person that we can't get.
And I think most of them don't even really need us to call in for support because literally when you turn the thing on, you put the app, just like anything these days, it really guides you through the process.
You get an audio indicator letting you know when your signal's strong, and you also have it right in the app to show you what the signal is.
And that's how you monitor your bandwidth and all that kind of good stuff.
Great device, and it runs on the same SAT network as the ISAT phone.
Now, there are a lot of RVers these days, a lot of people in RVs.
In fact, it's hard to even rent an RV because there's so many people trying to do it.
And people are on the road.
They're moving out of the cities.
I mean, they're just escaping LA, like the Kurt Russell movie, you know, or Escape from New York.
And they're on the road.
So I would imagine that system...
Right.
But that system can also work from the top of your RV or something.
I mean, once you're parked, you could set it up, right?
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Once you're on the halt or on the pause, we can use that terminal.
However, I have had some users actually use it on their boat because these terminals operate in the L-band frequency, which is a band of radio frequencies, 1500 to 1600 megahertz.
They take a lot of play.
The wind and clouds don't bother them very much.
Very close to the GPS frequency, right beside it.
So I've even had people on boats.
One guy told me he put it on his truck bed and drove down the road.
I had it the whole time, Eric.
I'm not supposed to do that.
But yes, they take a lot of play.
Almost an inch or two, and it's still not going to come offline.
But yeah, for RVers, for overlanders, people going out like myself for a handful of days, it's great.
Now, if you're going to be doing it pretty often, like somebody in an RV or an overland vehicle or something like that, you want to look more towards something that points for you.
So the brother to that 510 is called the 323.
I guess it's about the size of a large dinner plate, maybe three to four inches high, omnidirectional.
This is called an electronic phased array antenna, meaning there's no moving parts, no parts in there.
So it is pointing for you at the satellite as you move around and drive around one cable into power.
That also gives you an ethernet port and cab, but that runs off of 10 to 32 volt DC direct.
So good for vehicles, trucks.
And that'll keep you connected on the move.
And I like that because when I'm driving off-road many hours to get to my spot where I'm going, Uh, for testing or whatever may be doing, I like to still get my messages, especially if it's Friday and I want to make sure everything's good for the weekend and I can go retreat.
And, um, yeah, there's a lot of different reasons to do it, but, um, the three, two, three allows you to do it and not have to constantly adjust your points.
So doing it on the move is important.
That's it.
Now, that all makes a lot of sense.
In cost, let's talk about this.
So, you know, the phone is super affordable because you can get it essentially free when you sign up for a plan.
But these bandwidth devices that you mentioned, you know, I've been all over your website.
I notice there are a lot more money up front.
It's just the nature of the technology.
But also then they're metered, I think, by how many gigabytes that You can pay between $65 and $4,000 a month, depending on how much data you really need.
And what my tech team does, and we have tech teams here in Florida and California and Alaska, they help people really find out what they need.
Because in today's world, we're just all told we need Unlimited.
Buy unlimited and you're safe.
Well, with these satellite terminals, they are monitored by the megabyte and gigabyte.
So we help customers limit our usage to just what we're trying to do, just our business or commercial application or personal application.
And usually our customers are winding up paying a few hundred bucks a month when they want to use it.
And they do it kind of carefully.
But you're right.
The equipment for the 510 is right around $1,800.
And the 323 is right around, I believe, $3,300.
We're going to be making plans for them, kind of like the ISAT phone, that'll bring down the cost of that equipment.
That's what we strive to do.
Make this kind of technology more accessible, more affordable.
So this is fairly new.
The 323 just came out this year.
So we're going to be working on new plans to kind of do the same model we have for the ISAT phone.
But if you have a short-term need, a week.
Or two or a month, we actually offer an online rental program.
So you can go right there, pick a couple hundred megabytes or a gigabyte, and check out just for a time period so you don't have to own it.
Nice, nice.
Okay.
Pretty popular option.
Yeah, so I gotta say, during that Texas Blackout Week, I would have gladly paid that money to have that bandwidth.
I mean, just the emergency backup.
I couldn't write and post stories.
I couldn't review other people's stories, some of our staffers who write stories.
I couldn't do anything.
I was paralyzed for that week, and also I was running around trying to keep my animals from freezing, too.
So I was kind of busy.
But I would have gladly paid that.
I mean, as a business continuity option, It's not crazy affordable, I mean, or crazy expensive.
But I guess just for a personal use, like, you're not going to buy that so you can watch YouTube videos.
You know, that's not going to fly.
Not at all.
Not at all.
Yeah.
And the satellite phone isn't really kind of meant to replace your cell phone either.
You kind of get that question once in a while, like, hey, is this a replacement?
And I consider it, like, consider it, you know, like, when you, if you had a radio and you bought a cell phone, did you throw away your handheld radio?
No.
You kept it.
Yeah.
They have different functions.
That's how I try to explain it to people with a satellite phone.
It's not to throw away your cell phone.
If you have a VHF, a handheld, a ham, a sat phone, a cell phone, you've really gotten all three personal mobile voice kind of solutions you can get these days.
So, number one, the satellite phone is super accessible, super affordable.
You start getting into the data terminals, yeah, it is a bit more expensive, but I think the rental option is really nice for a lot of people.
We also have kind of larger, more mobile systems that actually are meant to bring up whole businesses and offices.
Like after Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Dorian, Michael, we constantly are deploying cases and kits of dishes and these devices to help bring up businesses and people here and there.
Right.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I've got even more questions for you, but first let me just remind the audience, let's be thankful for this sponsor, Satellite Phone Store, to step up to the plate here and sponsor Independent Media.
They also sponsor Steve Quayle's website as well.
well.
That's how I was checking them out because they have a good relationship with Steve Quayle.
Steve's been a great partner and getting the truth out for many, many years.
So go to sat123.com if you want to look at their phone plans.
That's sat123.com.
And if this can fit in your preparedness kit, and I found that I needed it, and now I have one.
Thank you.
Thank you, Eric, by the way, for sending me one.
I never want to be without a phone like this again.
I never want to be unable to make an emergency phone call.
Because my dog fell through the ice in my pond.
I did a public podcast about that.
It was late at night, and I had to save my dog.
I could not call anybody.
I had to get on my excavator, by the way, and drive it out there and smash the ice with the excavator bucket, and I had to use a lithium-ion jump starter to get that diesel engine to start, and fortunately my dog, who's a large Great Pyrenees, he was able to not die from hypothermia because he's full of fur, you know?
So I broke the ice, he swam to shore, and then I used a blow dryer when the power came back on, and I saved him, but...
I had to do it myself.
I had no option to call anybody.
I do not want to be in that situation again.
It's good that you got it done on your own.
I encourage everyone to be prepared like that.
But yeah, if you can have a sat phone to call someone to give you a hand.
And especially, you know, it's good for what we see now is more communities are kind of adopting them.
We're working in some communities where there's a team leader who's responsible for eight houses or a handful.
they have so many team leaders and then each one will have a sat phone.
So you actually have a backup redundant kind of community communications network.
And they watch out after people's properties and businesses and houses together.
So we're starting to see a lot of this because it's like, Oh, I want to call someone on my sat phone.
Well, their cell phone's down, too.
They may need one as well.
So, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And then groups like that, you can prearrange a certain time or multiple times of the day to call each other.
So you can say, you know, high noon, boom.
When that clock strikes 12, that's when I'm going to call you.
Or 6 p.m., we're going to do an evening check-in for the Neighborhood Watch Program or whatever.
You can just prearrange times.
This is really prevalent in your Northern California area where they're fighting wildfires.
They also have rolling blackouts, right?
Similar style.
And they get hit with it every year.
So, that's what I've been learning from some of those communities.
They're pretty advanced in their ways.
So, I would encourage any other people like yourself and some of the people that may be around you to consider a sat phone at least on kind of a baseline to help each other.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, folks, your local radios, like your Baofang radio, that's great for talking to neighbors within a mile, but you're not going to be able to talk to your friend even 10 miles away.
Not even.
You know, especially if there's hills between you and them.
But hills are no problem for satellites, because from the satellite view, everything's flat anyway, basically.
So just make sure you're not in a thick forest.
The limit is a 5 watt on a handheld, like a Baofanger.
So you got five watts.
We basically do a little simple rule of thumb conversion.
It's one watt per mile, unless you have mountains, hills, trees.
So yeah, that's the reality of it.
But yeah, satellite phone is not going to limit you to where you can call from or where you can call to.
Well, and the other thing, too, I thought about this, you know, a lot of people are concerned about EMP weapons, like North Korea may be launching an EMP. Now, if you take this phone and you put it in a Faraday cage protection, which you can take an aluminum trash can and you can put this in an insulated material inside the aluminum trash can and seal it up with,
like, metal tape and everything, this phone will not be impacted by the EMP. So, I'm sorry, go ahead.
That's how I have it at my house, yeah.
I keep it falling in a Saturday bag.
Okay, perfect.
So I'm not the only one who's thinking this way.
No, yeah, you're a step ahead, but for sure.
And even if I bring it when I'm traveling, I like to keep it in the bag.
Yeah.
So, yeah, then you can still make phone calls even when everything is fried, you know, depending on how much damage the EMP does.
Or solar flare, by the way.
I should mention, you know, space weather is also a natural disaster depending on what happens.
It's not just hurricanes and tornadoes and floods.
It's the sun, like, sending out giant flares and Earth is in a shooting gallery and those hit...
And also, you know, asteroids and so on, but the solar flares can really impair a lot of electronics that are on the surface of the planet.
Yeah, and I think they've even been known to mess up some satellites, none of the communication ones that we work with, but yeah, you're absolutely right.
There's been interruptions in other people's services because of solar flares.
Yeah, that's true.
There have been some satellite glitches over the years from time to time, but you're right.
I think the very low frequency, which is the long wavelength that InMarsat uses, I think, like you said, I think it's very resilient.
It can handle, it kind of adapts to a lot of electromagnetic interference.
Yeah, it does.
And I think this is a good place to kind of give people a little bit more education on the two SAT phones that are the major ones and how they're different.
So I'll grab them here.
Iridium and MRSAT. My favorite right now is MRSAT, but we'll go over the pros and cons of why one might be good or bad for you.
So we'll start with the MRSAT, as we've already touched on it.
SOS button on the top.
They both have that.
Really nice.
Easy to use.
Power it on.
Within 60 seconds, you're making a phone call.
It does its job great.
Important thing to recognize here, though, is this MRSAT phone is talking to geostationary satellites.
So think of a satellite TV dish that's pointing the same direction every day.
That's geostationary.
These ISAT phones are geostationary.
They have five all the way around the world.
The one for the United States sits right above 98.6 degrees west on the orbital slot in the equator.
So every day you go outside, that satellite's in the same place.
That's great for most of us who live between 40 degrees north and south of the equator.
You start getting a little bit above that, let's say Wyoming, Washington State, for example.
All my clients in Washington State are really on Iridium.
And the reason they're not on MRSAT, they'd like to be.
The prices are better.
The service is a little bit clearer.
But Iridium works on a different type of network.
It's 66 satellites.
There's six planes running north to south around the globe.
And that gives us a low-Earth orbiting network.
They call it LEO. So GEO, geostationary, and LEO, low-Earth orbiting.
The only other company right now that's attempting to do a LEO network is Elon Musk with Starlink.
I don't know really where that's going to go.
I listened to him at last year's Satellite 2020.
He said he wanted to not wind up in the bankrupt category.
He's got a pretty big endeavor to bring broadband to people's homes, which is a great thing.
But for right now, Iridium is the only truly global low-Earth orbiting network.
So even if I'm tucked in between mountains and the Rockies and Alaska, wherever I might be, the satellite's going to come overhead, pick it up, and I'm going to be able to get my call out.
However, we may fade with that signal too, right?
So it takes about seven minutes to get overhead.
So important for people to understand, majority of people are fine with an ISAT phone.
However, if you're going to be in mountainous areas, very mountainous areas, or deep in urban areas, iridium might be a better choice, but you're going to fill almost twice the price with this thing like that.
Wow.
Okay, so just to kind of simplify this and make sure it's clear, the Iridium phone, it's talking to satellites that are constantly in motion relative to your position on the ground, because like you said, they're low Earth orbit, so they have to have higher orbital velocity to stay in that orbit, obviously.
Whereas the InMarsat is geostationary, it's always in the same location in the sky relative to where you are on the ground.
And they are orbiting around the equator, but at very, very high altitude.
So for us in the Northern Hemisphere...
Synchronous with the Earth.
Right, synchronous with the Earth.
Do people end up buying these and then never using them?
Or like only on emergencies, and then they use them in a giant number of minutes at that time?
Or do people tend to use them from time to time...
Every once in a while.
I encourage people I work with to pull them out once a month, make sure the battery's holding the charge, make sure you know how to dial.
Like, you don't want to go running for a device using an emergency and not be familiar with it.
So that's why there's minutes included, text included, for people for familiarity in testing.
My experience, though, is the majority of our users are doing this for an event, a catastrophic type event.
And they haven't been wrong.
They've been through scenarios like yourself, like I've explained.
So they realize the need.
But yeah, generally it's tucked away, nice and safe.
However, if you've got a couple extra bucks, you can put it in a docking station so it's always on phone.
I think that there's some power to that.
Keeping it always up and available.
But yeah, I think the majority is kind of tucked away for emergency days.
Okay, now how big of a solar panel or a solar generator do you need to keep this phone charged?
It seems like it wouldn't take a very big solar panel, really.
We found out really good during Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
We had to send thousands of phones down there, personally delivered some, and we found out they were without power for many, many months.
So what we found out is it only really takes about a 10-watt solar panel and an extra battery bank To charge that battery bank during the day, top off your sat phone in the evening.
So we use these solar panels, this 10-watt from Goal Zero.
It's one of my favorite.
Really rugged, and it comes built with a little battery pack built in.
Very affordable, less than $100, and that'll keep your smartphone and your sat phone And maybe even another device going.
Okay, so that's goal zero.
And what's the connection?
Is it a USB charging connection?
A USB. Yep, yep.
So both the RIDIUM or MRSAT, they're all charged over USB. Oh, okay.
Micro USB, standard.
All right, because I'm charging it right now with something that plugs into the wall, but I noticed there are other cables in there.
That's the AC charger that come with it, and it's kind of like iPhone, right?
The charger that comes with the iPhone or the Android phone that you buy is probably kind of designed for it by the manufacturer's specs.
It's probably going to charge it the fastest, right?
Right.
But they charge over any 5-volt charger.
Yeah, USB. Okay, okay.
Standard.
All right.
Now, so another question about the electromagnetic energy that's emitted by this.
You know, a lot of people are concerned about cell phones, but I notice when you have this antenna extended, I mean, that antenna is directional.
And in fact, you can't put your head in the middle of that because you'll block the phone call.
So you're not in that beam.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's a great point.
So my satellite's there.
I want to have the phone on this side of my head.
Now, generally, that tip of that phone is going to make it over.
So even if you are there, you're probably pretty good.
Yeah.
But it really depends where in the world you are because it's geostationary relative to where we're at.
But yeah, they are directional.
So if I were to take this phone, I have to Alaska.
We have an office in Anchorage.
I actually have to kind of point it like that.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Or if I go to Chile, you know, Tierra del Fuego, I'm pointing it kind of north towards the satellite.
Okay.
Anywhere between 40 degrees north or south of the equator, I tell people it's like a water bottle.
Hold it straight up.
Don't tip it over.
Yeah.
You know, don't get on the call and then hold it like this, like you would your iPhone on speaker.
You know?
Keep it up.
Keep it erected up.
Yeah.
And I like to keep the...
I do put them on loudspeaker.
I do put my sat phone on loudspeaker when I make a call.
I tell people about six inches is kind of the magic five to six inches.
If you're too close, we call it swallowing the mic.
You're kind of just overpowering it.
Too far away.
It's too faint.
So right about six inches seems to be right.
Okay, cool.
So how do you know, depending on the latitude of where you're located, how do you know really the angle that's best for this?
Like if you're in Denver or if you're in Miami versus Chicago, how do you know the best angle?
You know, anywhere between the top of the United States all the way down to past Central America, past Bolivia, past Peru, you're going to be just fine pretty much having it kind of straight up.
Really?
Yeah.
It isn't until you get kind of past 40 degrees north or south that you kind of have to start kind of pointing it.
And if you do have to do that, or you're going to be taking a trip, you're like, oh, I'm going to take my sat phone to Mongolia this year, or wherever you may want to go, there's a free website.
It's called dishpointer.com.
You can put in where you want to go or where you are, and you can pick the MRSAT satellite.
So the one here over all of the Americas is at 98.6 W for West.
If you pick that, you can drop your little pen anywhere on the map.
It'll tell you the elevation and the direction of the satellite.
Oh, okay.
Pretty cool little tool.
Yeah, so I use that quite often just to help people feel a little more comfortable about where they're going.
How can people get extra batteries?
Just order.
It's easy on the website or with our sales reps.
I do recommend an extra battery.
They're not that expensive.
I think they're less than $50.
They have a nice seal around them, too.
The whole phone is water-resistant.
It can submerge, I believe, one meter for up to 30 seconds, I want to say.
IP67, I believe.
Pop that battery out.
Pop another one in.
I think for the preparedness that we're talking about here, having an extra battery, having a little 10 watt solar panel, and actually for your, we did a special deal for you.
Oh, here it is.
Anyone who calls in who's coming from Natural News can get a free case.
This is a soft case, and this isn't some cheapo case.
I found these at the Consumer Electronics Show two years ago, and they're cases by this company, Night Eyes, if you find them in West Marines and stuff.
But we include this case, and this case will allow you to put the phone, the battery, a few items in there, have it all completely sealed up, waterproof, and then you can stick that in your Faraday bag if you want.
Okay.
Yeah, that really works.
Okay, and what happens when you press the emergency button on top of the phone?
Do the Marines show up?
What happens?
So, I used to believe it was disabled by default, because when you power on the phone, it does say, hey, turn on your SOS contacts.
Um, but recently I had an instance of the large enterprise where we, we pressed it and we did get a call, uh, right away from, um, goes Alliance.
So they're based out of, I think, Texas as well.
And, uh, but they have offices all over the world.
Um, they, they kind of specialize in medical evacuations for our customers.
So if I'm in Mexico, I'm off-roading, I break my leg.
Hit the button.
They're going to coordinate an air evacuation for me.
That's included in your sat phone plan.
It's a basic subscription to GOES Alliance.
It's pretty easy when you get the phone to set it up.
Register your account with GOES. That way they know if you press the button Who you are and everything.
But yeah, so that's what the SOS button does.
It can put the phone call.
It can make a phone call to Go's Alliance, put it on speaker, and it can start sending your position to them every two minutes.
Now, you can disable that if you don't want that.
A lot of our customers and users want to do their own self-rescue.
You can put up to three contacts, phone numbers or emails.
That'll be called or text if you hit that button.
Wow.
So where do you go to set that up?
So goesalliance.com, and I think that's what the website is.
There's a little packet that comes with each phone and says, hey, go to this website, register.
We can't do it for people because there's some personal information it's asking for, you know, like who's your agency contact and stuff.
It takes just a few minutes.
It's going to ask you for your phone number, which is always printed on the phone, your phone number.
It's going to ask you for an IMEI. Just like a cell phone has an IMEI. That's under the battery.
There's your IMEI. You put in those two pieces of information, the rest of your contact, emergency details, and it's registered.
So if you were to actually use it...
How do you spell GOES? Let me help.
Yeah, let me just pull that up so we don't have anybody go on the wrong website.
Yeah, we want to get it right on screen.
Absolutely.
All right.
So they have a website and it is my-geos.com slash registration.
Okay.
My-geos.com slash registration.
You can pick your device type.
All the devices are compatible.
Put in your emergency contact information and you will be registered and armed.
And that is included in every SatFund subscription.
Okay.
Because I remember, you know, years ago, I think there was a device called Spot that was just an emergency, like...
It contacts the same facility.
Spot contacts goes.
Yep.
And inReaches, if you've ever heard of little inReach messengers, those contacts goes.
Maybe they call it Geos.
I'm not really sure.
But all the devices go back to that organization, and they do a really good job.
Okay, so with the phone, then you've got that built in.
It's like an emergency rescue request.
Satellite beacon, yeah.
Yeah, satellite beacon.
So if you get kidnapped in South America, you can press that button and hold the phone out the window, try to get the satellite.
I shouldn't be joking, because kidnapping ransom is a very big deal in a lot of countries these days.
It's used for security details, worldwide, for sure.
But they aren't usually working with GOs.
They're usually reporting it back to their own kind of emergency operations center, deploying their own tactical type people.
But yeah, that's a...
Real scenario.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Okay.
All right.
Well, hopefully none of our viewers are going to get kidnapped in South America.
I lived there for two years and managed not to get kidnapped, so that was a big success.
But, you know, it is dangerous kind of being perceived as the rich gringo, you know what I mean, in a South American country.
I ran into some of that myself.
You know, I feel like the people are so nice, especially in Mexico, where I spend half my time.
But yeah, there's stuff lurking everywhere trying to hurt us, you know?
Yeah, it's true.
I got along great with the locals.
I had tons of friends there, and one of my friends made me the godfather of his newborn son.
I went to the Catholic Church with him and was part of that ceremony.
Yeah, the family interaction is just amazing.
It's amazing.
I'm blessed for my family here in America, and I really love my family in South America, too, because they make you feel so welcome.
Yeah, yeah, so true.
But like you said, there are dangers lurking everywhere.
There's a criminal element in an American city or in a Brazilian city or wherever you go.
There is a criminal element, and this kind of solution enables you to have that other backup plan.
Even on a boat, on your sailboat in the middle of the Pacific, and you forgot there's a storm coming, you know, or whatever.
For the sailboats, it's funny that you mentioned that.
So, you know, we started with the ISAT phone, and with that ISAT phone, we can actually even kind of connect a computer and do little bitty email and get weather.
So we actually have quite a few people who are on sailboats who get what we call grid weather files.
It's basically this little binary file we can load, and now we can see wind, wave, temp, pressure.
Off a little bitty connection from the sat phone.
Really?
We help a lot of people do that every day.
It takes a little bit more setup.
It's usually about a 30-minute setup.
We help people with the software, kind of rigging it up.
But that's how a lot of people get their weather and email every day, actually, on the water.
That's fascinating.
Well, also, you know, I was trained in flying a small aircraft.
And so I know a lot of pilots of Cessnas and so on.
And when you're in a Cessna, you're often flying over areas that have no population.
And if you go down in one of those areas...
And you have a nice glide-in landing in some farmer's field somewhere, which you can do in a Cessna.
You can definitely survive no power in a Cessna, no problem.
Except not at night.
That's not such a great thing.
But as long as you can see where you're going, you can land it, you can walk away.
But how are you going to call somebody, you know?
Yeah, he's going to help you out of the situation.
And with the small fixed-wing aircraft, we find a lot of people will use this little guy.
It runs on the Iridium network.
It's called the Iridium Go.
It's only $695.
So it's a little bit less than the regular Iridium phone, which runs over $1,000.
And that connects to your mobile device.
And that allows you to send and receive text messages and make phone calls with your regular mobile phone.
Kind of a cool little thing by Iridium.
Yeah, anyone who's kind of leaning Iridium might want to be interested in the Iridium Go.
Kind of one of my favorites on their network.
And it has an external antenna port.
We have customers that have a suction cup antenna that goes right on the front windscreen, and they're able to make phone calls and send texts while in flight.
While flying?
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
And still get weather updates, too.
So that's a fairly popular thing for our small aircraft aviators.
Huh, is that...
Is it fairly new, that device, or how long has that been?
The Iridium Go has been out for almost three years, four years, and it You know, it made a big splash at first because we thought we were going to get internet from it.
But really, the Wi-Fi signal is just used to get our mobile device talking to it.
There's no internet behind it, just like sat phone capabilities.
But for our customers who are flying, they tend to be doing that all the time, and they want to send messages or make a couple calls in flight.
And those systems are usually tens and tens of thousands of dollars to get installed.
So doing that from a small mobile application like the Iridium Go is pretty cool.
Okay, so wow.
In effect, you have this assortment of options for almost any need, whether someone wants just an emergency backup phone, or they need some backup bandwidth, or they have a sailboat in the Pacific Ocean, or they're in an airplane flying over the deserts of Nevada, whatever.
We could spend the whole time talking about just a satellite phone, but I think it'd be kind of a disservice because there are a few other solutions that people might fit better.
So yeah, I think all together we have 20 to 30 different types of solutions that range from just a sat phone up to higher power internet services and But the ones that I just discussed with you are probably some of the most popular, most accessible, most useful.
Okay, definitely.
Well, I'm going to keep using your solutions.
I'll just keep sharing that information because I'm very much a solutions-oriented guy.
Now, normally, and my listeners know this, I like to go as low-tech as possible.
But sometimes the right tech...
Is another layer.
So, I mean, yeah, we can say, okay, low-tech or no-tech, that's how I kind of categorize things, is high-tech, low-tech, and no-tech.
So high-tech would be a satellite phone, low-tech would be a landline, and no-tech would be smoke signals.
I get it.
Smoke signals and flags.
That's the original way people communicate.
Absolutely.
Exactly.
Yeah, go ahead.
I totally get it because before I really got into technology almost 20 years ago, I didn't want anything to do with it.
Grew up riding horses and fishing and didn't even want a laptop.
And then I just got hooked and, you know, I had a knack for it.
Now, when I go out, whether it be fishing or camping or whatever, I like to disconnect because if I carry one of these with me, I'm going to be getting calls and emails the whole time, you know?
So how do I disconnect?
And I realize the sat phone's great for someone like me because I don't want full-blown connectivity.
If I do, I'll be sitting by the campfire at 5 a.m.
with my coffee checking my emails, and I don't want that.
I want to digitally disconnect.
You know, it's healthy, I think.
Yeah, good point.
Well, okay, so let me ask you a surveillance question then.
So in the default mode, if I turn this sat phone on and it connects with the satellite, is it by default broadcasting my GPS coordinates?
Only to the satellite itself, because what the satellite does is it...
So it'll take GPS that comes from your device.
That's the first thing the iSat phone has to do is it has to get a GPS. And the reason for it is it takes that GPS, sends it to the satellite, The satellite says, okay, you're here, turn to this frequency.
So it's almost like if you and I were talking on frequency 13 and we're like, hey, we need better comps, go to channel 4.
That's what the satellite is doing with your GPS and the mobile devices.
It's turning to a frequency per your spot beam.
So it is actually taking your position and transmitting it to the satellite network, but that's where it stops.
Okay, so the company that owns the satellite is not, let's say, tracking my physical location every time I use a phone.
They're based in London.
It's MRSAT. They've been around for 40 years.
They started as an intergovernmental organization, and they provide these services really for safety.
That's how MRSAT started.
But no, I mean...
Actually, I don't really know 100% what is connected to their network or any network, right?
I don't run them.
I can't say 100% certainty, but the likelihood of someone like yourself or myself having our GPS position tracked on a satellite phone is very, very low, unless you're a A cartel member or a terrorist.
Right, right.
Standing on top of your submarine in the Caribbean smuggling cocaine and then, yeah, I got a signal.
No, but see, this is a serious question.
So there are times when you want privacy, right?
You're a law-abiding citizen.
You're out in the wilderness.
You just want to be left alone.
There are other times where you want to be found, like when you press that red button because you fell and broke your leg, you're like, please come find me, you know?
So the device only sends its GPS out to the network to tune to the right frequency, stops there.
The only other time your GPS is sent is when you actually invoke it by hitting the button there.
There's also a nice...
A lot of people want to pull out their sat phone and let somebody know where they're at.
I'm at this kilometer or this mile number on this state road and I need this.
There's a button right on the side that allows you to queue up a GPS one time, send it out to a contact.
Yeah, it's called a quick GPS. You got to preset the contact in there, but once you preset like You know, a few of your local friends who might actually come to your aid, you know, you can set that, click it, pull up a fresh GPS, you can include a message, hey, doing alright, got to first campsite, or whatever it may be, need help, and send it.
So, does the device send out your GPS to other parties that you don't want?
No, I can say that.
It doesn't leave the network.
But you can actually send your GPS out for a good reason, which is to get help.
Okay, I guess I gotta read the manual on that and set that up, because I haven't used that feature.
Is that the button that has a little up arrow?
Yeah, so right on the side, a little up arrow.
Cool.
And that'll let you go ahead and set your quick GPS recipients.
So you can have three quick GPS recipients that'll get a quick message that you can edit, and it'll include your GPS. And then when you press that button, the network sends them like a SMS text?
Your device queues up an SMS, puts your GPS on that SMS, allows you to edit the message so you can include some custom text and send it out.
Okay, cool.
Alright, now there's one more big element to all of this that we haven't gotten into, and I don't know if you're ready to announce this yet, but...
We can tease it, and that is you're working on a network that would allow people who buy these phones to receive emergency texts from people like myself or Steve Quayle, and they would be able to subscribe to kind of that alert channel.
Is that correct?
Yeah, yeah.
We came up with this idea here because we really needed a way I've just been around so many hurricanes and so many disasters or places where we have cell phones, we have satellite phones, but we're not getting through all the time.
A satellite phone traditionally comes with a long international number, okay?
So we sell USA numbers.
It makes it a little bit easier for people to call a USA number, especially during an emergency.
You don't want to have to go figuring out, do I have to dial 00011?
How do I get a hold of the person?
And also, it's not always that the sat phone is on and ready to take your call if you're trying to reach somebody on it.
So the way this system will work is that it'll allow one-to-many broadcast.
So let's say everything is down.
You have your sat phone.
You have your family.
Let's say your family's 30 people.
You want to send one message, and all of them get it.
You'll have a dedicated message.
Short number that's assigned to you, and it's firewall where nobody can send messages to that number except who you've approved.
Okay?
Because what happens, it gets sent to that number, and then it gets repeated to all the other numbers in the group.
So with one Swift, almost like a Twitter for satellite phones, so to say, but it limits who can follow you.
Excuse me, we're not just letting anybody follow us here.
It's selective.
There'll be some public groups, but yes, private groups as well.
So anybody who buys this phone, then once this system gets up and running, they can receive emergency texts from me.
And I would just use the keypad to type in short text messages like, you know, go deep underground, incoming, you know, or whatever.
It'll be 160 characters that you can send out that will go to everybody else who you've allowed to follow you in your group.
Now, Ben, do they get that message when they connect?
Because I send it at 12 noon, but obviously other people don't have their phone on, so when they turn their phone on and connect, is that when it comes through for them?
That's where usually the SMS messages fail, right?
They don't get through in about an hour, and you won't get that SMS anymore.
Right.
Off into the ether.
No.
Our server is going to cache that and keep trying to deliver it.
And we're going to allow an acknowledgement.
So people can reply.
One, acknowledge.
So it'll be a feature that'll allow people to acknowledge with the server.
And if they don't acknowledge, trying to keep sending it to them every day on such a frequency.
Until we know the message.
Nothing like sending a message and not getting an acknowledgement.
Right, right.
Not knowing it went out, right?
Who are you really talking to then?
So, big important part of the service.
And I came up with this because I've seen...
Some cellular connectivity coming and going.
The event was Panama City.
My brother's army unit was there.
They had very little cell phone service.
He could barely send me a text message.
Eric, I need sat phones.
I need to order water and porta-potties for these people.
He was with the Army.
And we got a couple of sat phones into him real quick, and he was able to quickly do that.
But he's trying to communicate with the governor, and the governor's on a cell.
And then these guys are on other cell phone networks.
Some are working, some aren't.
So with this, we're going to allow cellular or satellite phones to be a part of the group.
So if you wind up losing cellular service, it kind of fails to your SAP. Okay.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, um, push the text allows, uh, one to many, uh, messaging with firewalls and permissions and even allow people to have public online groups.
So what you can do is send your messages and you can choose whether or not you want to let that group be public.
So if it is public, people can go online, see all the messages, have the whole history.
This is cool.
So when I become a criminal garden seed smuggler, because I think they're going to outlaw home gardening, I'm going to have, like, broccoli seeds, and I'll text out my GPS coordinates, meet me in this parking lot, bring gold, and I'll give you lettuce, you know?
One guy brings meat, or one, yeah, somebody brings furs, or whatever it may be.
Absolutely.
It could very well be used for something like that Monday.
But I'm envisioning...
Disaster response to start with, helping save lives, for sure.
Okay.
Well, now I've blown the secret.
That's my future career, is I'm going to be a garden seed smuggler and try to help people grow onions and things, you know.
Apparently, I'm a threat to the global controllers because I want to teach people to grow food.
Really?
Yeah.
All right.
Well, anything else, Eric?
Well, you got me thinking.
I've heard of these huge seed banks in Idaho and Wyoming areas where they've actually stored away massive amounts of seeds and stuff.
I just read it online.
I don't know how true it is or not.
Oh, it's true.
No, it's absolutely true.
But in my industry, we say the best seed bank are the seeds that you're growing right now.
So the best way to bank seeds is to keep those crops going and then save the seeds and have the next generation grow.
Not have them go stale and being three years old or something.
Keep them revolving.
Yeah, exactly.
And seeds also adapt.
They're evolving to your local soil conditions and climate conditions.
So each generation actually gets better suited to you where you are growing that food.
This is kind of interesting.
It's one of the biggest growing areas of new growth for the business.
We have small little satellite sensors that go out for agriculture and farming and sense soil.
Yeah, water in the soil and all kinds of neat stuff, Internet of Things.
So people are interested in communications.
I guess my last message here is if you're interested in communicating with stuff, whoever it may be, or with people, give us a call.
We're experts in it.
We can help you figure it out.
So could you sell something that's like even a remote flood sensor or something?
That calls you or sends you a text when...
It's very easy, very simple, low-power, little devices with little input-output relays.
Really?
Open this gate.
Yeah.
Really?
That kind of stuff.
Yeah.
But we'll chat a little bit later.
We might have some more stuff for you.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm going to need your tech for all kinds of stuff because I've got all kinds of interesting security systems and I always want to beef that up.
So, yeah.
All right.
We'll talk later.
I'll be your guy.
All right.
Cool, Mike.
Thanks, man.
Great to meet you.
See you.
Thank you, Eric.
Yep.
Bye.
So folks, just check out sat123.com.
That's the place to go to get these solutions.
And look, you just heard Eric explain that they've got a lot of solutions that you can use for different things.
I'm very happy that this company is a sponsor of what we're doing, helping us to build out platforms for freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to grill your own food, just the freedom to be mobile in our world and yet also have security and backup communications and so on.
I'm going to be using their solutions, as you heard, probably for many years to come, different kinds of solutions, and I'm always going to have a sat phone with me when I'm traveling, whether even by air or by boat or whatever, or just walking in the country.
Just put this in your go bag, and you've got a backup plan.
Thank you for watching and thank you for supporting our sponsors and I appreciate your support for what we do and your willingness to check out this kind of solution.
I know it's very rare that I do this kind of interview with a sponsor, but this is a real special case that I think can help save lives.
So again, thank you for your attention today and spending time with me and keep checking Health Ranger Report for daily podcasts.
There will be a lot of preparedness and survival information in those podcasts.
I'm Mike Adams.
A creator of naturalnews.com, brighttown.com, and many more websites, including, by the way, survival.news, if you want to check that out.
So thank you for watching today, and be safe.
Take care.
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