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June 13, 2022 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
25:24
NEW solution package introduced for satellite texting / emergency comms
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Welcome to the Health Ranger Report on Brighteon.tv.
And today we've got a new announcement for you in terms of your backup emergency communications.
The Satellite Phone Store, which is a sponsor of Brighteon, is announcing a new package that includes a pre-installed app on a mobile phone device that is synchronized with the bivvy stick, giving you two-way satellite-based text messaging with unlimited messaging.
And with no hassle.
You don't have to install anything.
You don't have to download anything.
You don't have to turn off location services or anything like that.
It's all done for you in a very convenient, easy-to-use package that's mobile that you can even add a solar panel to it if you wish and a charging device, and it can be, you know, reliable off-grid.
So that's from the Satellite Phone Store, the Bivvy Stick Solution.
New announcements coming.
Stay tuned.
We're going to have that interview and why this matters.
Just stay with us.
We'll be right back after this break with that full interview.
Welcome back to the Health Ranger Report here on Brighttown.tv.
We're joined now from the satellite phone store by Tina and Eric.
Thank you both for being here.
It's great to have you here.
And I hope I get all the details correct here.
But you're here to fill in the blanks in case I screw this up.
But go ahead.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having us, Mike, again.
Yeah, we're excited to be here again today and showing off some of the new technology we have that can help keep people safe and connected no matter what kind of situation they're going through.
So thanks again for having us.
Well, absolutely.
Let me just say I'm so impressed with what your company is doing.
You put together a solution here that everybody can use.
And with what you're about to announce today, at least as I understand it, you're solving one of the main conundrums or stumbling blocks that people had, which was in order to use the bivy stick, they needed to download and install an app on their iPhone or Android device.
Now you have a solution that solves that problem for them.
Go ahead and explain that solution for people because now it's super easy.
Everybody can use it.
Yeah, no, we took the cue and the feedback great from our customers and listeners.
They had difficulty.
They didn't want to have GPS or didn't want a Gmail account.
So we took all that into consideration, did a lot of research, and we landed on a type of Nokia phone that we're able to make sure there's no Gmail account, GPS is off, tracking, all this stuff is disabled.
And we put the Bivy app on there for you, and we synchronize it.
So when you get your device, And your bivy just works out of the package for you.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
And that's what it is.
The goal is 9 out of 10 people or more will be able to set it up and use it without having to feel like, you know, they're technically challenged or trying to figure out if they need this to counter that.
So it's something that we're really excited about.
I really love that solution because, you know, I'm a user of the bivvy stick.
I take it with me every time I drive anywhere.
I have one in my car.
But I would rather have a dedicated standalone mobile phone for that and not use my regular phone for that.
So you've just solved that problem.
And the other complaint that I heard that you've solved is, you know, people thought that they had to create an account to use the app, like they had to sign up and they had to turn on location services, and you don't, but it's not obvious.
Like, you have to kind of skip, you have to scroll down and hit skip and everything, but you've solved that now.
You're absolutely right, Mike.
We've set up hundreds of these phones now, so we have it down.
We have the process.
It takes our tech team some time to actually do it.
They don't make it easy.
They're definitely trying to figure out everything about our lives and track who knows what.
So by turning it all off, we're giving people that kind of assurance that they don't have to mess with any of those settings.
They get it, open the box, pair it, and they're working and able to use their ViviStick.
And real quick, the baby stick, you're showing it in the foreground.
Can you pick that up again just to show people how small this device is?
Even though it talks to satellites, it's very tiny and it holds a charge for days.
This is using a new accessory we like a lot that you can get from us where it's a suction cup so you can actually stick it right to a outside window and now that can be nice side your window and you can be inside now you can't be like four rooms away or other side of the house Like, your smartphone needs to be within Bluetooth range.
That's what it's using, 30 feet.
And it can be through a window.
But now I can get signal inside.
Bibi can be outside.
I can get Galileo messages.
I can message with my family or friends.
So sometimes it's just the little accessories that really make it all work.
You're absolutely right.
This is awesome.
You're always innovating.
Tina, just great job, by the way, on all the innovation.
And talk to us about why BivyStick is more crucial than ever because of the uncertainty of the power grid.
We're all being warned they're going to be rolling blackouts this summer across the U.S., and that means cell towers are going to go down.
So talk to us about the two-way satellite comms.
Right.
So the Bivy Stick will give you communication from anywhere on Earth.
It does use all of Iridium 66 satellites.
So it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter where you are.
If you're living off the grid or you want to get off the grid, it's the best way to be able to communicate while you are off the grid with loved ones without being tracked.
And this is the reason why we believe it is important to have some kind of a backup communication.
An event of, you know, there is a communication down or, you know, in your case, where you were, there was a freeze that took the communication down.
There could be hurricanes or any kind of weather or any kind of disasters or government shutdown, whatever.
You will still have communication to be able to communicate with your loved ones.
Now with BIVI, you can send a text message and receive text message from any phone to any phone that can receive messages.
It could be a sat phone, a cell phone, it doesn't matter.
Or from BIVI to BIVI or again from sat phone to sat phone.
One of the other questions, Mike, that a lot of people ask is, do I have to use my iPhone phone number to be able to send text message?
The answer is no.
You do get a USA phone number with your bivy sticks.
So it is a completely separate thing.
You don't even have to have your iPhone connected to cell phone service to be able to use this communication.
You can actually put your phone on airplane mode so that it turns everything off and then communicate through the satellite using the bivy app.
Yeah, exactly.
This is worth clarifying, but if you do turn on airplane mode, then in some phones you have to turn back on Bluetooth, I think, right?
The concept there is airplane mode is going to make sure that the device is not trying to send and receive any other signal, so it does turn off your Bluetooth.
But yeah, you need to go back, turn that back on.
That's part of our getting started with Bivy devices.
It doesn't have to happen, but we found that it does work better and it's more secure that way.
But I love the fact that these, is it Nokia?
Are those the phones you're offering now?
They don't even have a SIM card, so they're incapable of talking to cell towers.
You don't want them to talk to cell towers.
No.
There's actually two SIM card slots right there, but there's nothing in there.
And you get a bunch of messages you have to skip past, skip past, skip past.
So you're exactly right.
They don't make it easy.
But I think we're going to be able to do that for people.
That's fantastic.
And then this is so easy to use.
I've used this with people who are actually operating with Texas law enforcement on the border, the southern border of Texas with Mexico, and they are using these where there are no cell towers.
And I know that these are being used by people all over the world, sometimes in conflict zones or in emergencies or wilderness and outdoor hiking and things like that.
People are using them very successfully.
They're so easy to use.
It's just like sending or receiving a text from your phone, except you're just doing it through the Bivy Stick app.
That's the only difference.
Yeah, and just to clarify, again, not everyone needs a Bivy.
Some people can have a Bivy.
You could be messaging a cell phone or an email from your Bivy.
You don't have to have a Bivy, and you also get a unique phone number with the Bivy.
We get that question a ton.
So, no, you don't need active cell phone service to use a Bivy.
Yeah, I'm really glad you clarified that.
So let me lay out a scenario for people.
Like, I'm in Texas, and Texas had a blackout last year at a time when other states did not.
So if I'm in the middle of a blackout, I can use the bivy stick and I can text somebody on their regular phone, on their regular cell service in another state, and they will receive the message.
From my BIVI number.
And then they can reply to that message and it will come back to me via the BIVI satellite communication system all during my blackout, my local blackout, correct?
Yeah, that's the beautiful thing is just be able to send and receive messages to other cell phones or BIVI devices.
So if there was a widespread outage and you're out in Texas and I'm out in Florida, then yeah, we're probably both communicating on our BIVIs.
Yeah.
That's a very bad situation.
But in most cases, there's a small affected area like a fire in California, hurricanes along the southeast, and the people in the affected area are having to use a bivy, whereas they're calling people that are out of that affected area.
So, good thing to point out.
I gotta say, too, you know...
People may not know this, and my question to you, Tina, you know, the satellite phone store is a very compassionate corporation.
You have, in the past, over the years, donated so many satellite phones or leased them or, I mean, loaned them to first responders, in some cases just given them out to so many first responders following natural disasters and so on to save lives.
And I know that you still do that behind the scenes.
You don't brag about it.
You didn't ask me to say it, but I'm just going to say it.
So your company cares about people.
But right now, you're out of satellite phones.
Talk to us about the shortage of sat phones and also the coming shortage of maybe, is it going to affect the bivvy stick hardware in the future?
I mean, is that going to be a reliable supply?
I mean, I spend half of my day trying to find satellite phones to keep, you know, the company going every single day.
And I may find, you know, 50 a week or 100 a week.
And so we're keeping those, most of them.
We are selling.
Some people...
Say that I have to have a sat phone and we do sell them, Mike, but we stopped giving them away for free.
So, and then we're also selling some of our used phones that we used to rent out previously.
So some customers, you know, need to have the satellite phones.
But my main concern is that, and one of the reasons why I'm trying to find as many phones as I can find, Because if there is, this year, if there is a natural disaster in the U.S., it's going to be a problem for first responders.
Because previously, with hurricanes, we run out of, everybody runs out of satellite phones when there's a small disaster.
This year, with the shortage, and if there's a major hurricane that lands somewhere in the U.S., you know, the communication could be a big issue.
And not just from us, but from worldwide.
But what about the, you know, microchips are in short supply globally.
I know Taiwan Semiconductor is a major supplier, just generally speaking, across the industry.
I don't know.
I mean, how's the BibbyStick company even going to be able to make these in 2023, for example?
I mean, I don't know.
I'm just asking.
Yeah, so the company that It's called ACR. They're mainly in emergency services, so they plan years and years in advance, but they're having a hard time also getting some parts.
This is the reason why we're probably going to be a couple weeks out from sending these babies, and maybe even in July and August, we might even be later, maybe about a month.
We are having a hard time getting these.
They were supposed to provide us with 500 a week, and they were only able to do About 200 a week.
They told us that in June, they'll probably be able to supply us with about 2,000 of them.
That's not going to be enough for us to supply all of our customers, and we know that.
So once we start to run low, what we're going to do is we're going to push them back a couple of weeks.
Right now, if you place an order, it is going to be about a week or two to get them.
And then at the end of this Month, if you place an order, there's a possibility that it may take a month or So the sooner the better, folks, you can get your order in at sat123.com.
And the Satellite Phone Store is a sponsor of Brighton TV. And so they pay us for advertising space on Brighton.
But I've got to say, I'm very particular about inviting any sponsors on.
But the Satellite Phone Store, thanks to both of you, Tina and Eric, you provide a life-saving solution that everybody needs, in my view, right now because of the chaos in the world.
And you have been so gracious.
You've worked with so many people.
You offer fantastic support.
I get positive comments from customers all the time.
They're just thrilled to be able to communicate without relying on the cell towers.
And it's all because of what you're doing.
So thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
I just wanted to recap the offer that we're launching.
It's $89 a month.
You get a nice smart device, your bivy stick, you get Galileo and insurance that covers the bivy.
We don't offer insurance to cover the smart devices, but it does come with a screen protector and a heart case.
So that's Probably the best offer that's out there, I think, in the world in terms of being able to get a smart computer that's touchscreen in your hand connected to a satellite messenger.
That's what we're really talking about here.
It's incredibly affordable.
Absolutely, yeah.
The other options that people should probably want to consider is solar panels.
If you don't already have solar, a lot of our listeners have solar.
They are well prepared.
But in terms of mobile solar, like if you need a bug out situation, we do offer small mobile battery pack and solar.
All this fits inside of our nice GoDart Faraday bags.
Nice.
I'm not a great sales guy, but this is just like the kit that we know works.
After working around hurricanes and fires, Time and time again, it keeps people connected.
So those are some things you might want to consider if you're placing an order or talking to one of our sessions.
So the battery that you have for that, that's charged by the solar panel, and that panel, is that a 10-watt panel or something, or 5 to 10 watts, or what is it?
Actually, it's a highly efficient 5-watt panel from Goal Zero.
I like 10, 20 watts, but we actually find that this one, the form factor fits inside of our Faraday bag, which is kind of hard to do.
And the battery is a 10,000 milliamp.
Would I like a 20 or a 30,000 milliamp?
Yes.
But for the size, the price, the form factor, It tells you how much signal or how much power you have right there.
It can charge the bivvy and it can charge your new smart device.
I think that this is the best kit that we've been able to put together and we've tried tons of solar panels.
The cool thing people may not realize is, first of all, the bivvy stick uses very little power because it's not constantly talking to the satellite.
It's kind of burst mode, you know, to send and receive a burst.
And then secondly, People think about your mobile device, your smartphone, and the battery life.
If you don't use the cell towers, your smartphone battery lasts way longer because it's not sending and receiving to the cell tower.
So, right?
I mean, that's your experience, too.
Yeah, weeks.
It can last weeks because you're not using the screen.
Another thing that we do in our custom setup is if you get a bivy, it'll actually try to use the GPS of your smartphone.
It's actually a setting in the Bivy app that we check.
It says, use the business position if we want position information.
So that is a setting that I do recommend people look into.
And if you need some help, call us up and we can help you.
But it's really just in the settings to turn off GPS on your device.
Okay, great.
All that in this package for people.
So this package is $89 a month.
There's no other hardware fees.
It's just a monthly fee.
Unlimited texting, correct?
Unlimited texting, SOS, weather.
Yeah, there's quite a bit you get to the bivy.
That's the other function I wanted to mention.
There's an SOS function that only uses the bivy stick itself.
There's an actual button hidden inside a compartment on the bivy stick.
If you're in an emergency and you want to alert rescue operations, there's always that option as well.
This is for our customers that are either A, very adventurous types, which we have a lot of, or B, just caught behind the lines of a fire or a bad situation.
They really do need search and rescue to come and get them, and that's exactly what that button does for you.
And Mike, you do have an option.
You can set up five people that you trust the most, and you have a button that you can press, and it will only send that message in a GPS location.
To those five people, if you need it, but if you are in extreme emergency, there is a setup that you can set and then press the red button and that will get you the help for if you're in an extreme, like you said, if there's a fire or if you're hiking alone and you fell and you can't, you know, move, then the help will get you.
And you don't need a smartphone for that feature, for any of those features.
You can just take the baby stick without the smartphone and you can access the five people and you can access emergency.
And as we talk about groups, For an extra $10 a month on Bivy's, you can actually get group tracking and messaging.
So it's something that's just going to get launched now.
That means if you have a group of 10, 15 other Bivy users, you can actually, if you enable it, you can all see each other on the map and have a group message.
If you all are evacuating from an area or trying to survive through an event, it actually gives you that group function that just got launched this week, and it's just $10 on top of any of the unlimited plans we offer.
That's really cool.
That's the first time I've heard about that.
But I know that, you know, it's got a map function as well.
And then on your screen on the mobile device, you've got a map.
So I'm thinking about people in a bug out situation as well.
Grid goes down, you know, some kind of disaster or emergency or who knows what.
And you're trying to get out of a city and you forgot to bring your paper maps.
Well, as long as you can see the sky, you know, you've got satellite maps basically right there on your screen.
Yeah, in the Bivi app, you can draw a square around the area that is of interest, and it'll download all these topographical maps for you to use.
Like, we're not connected on Wi-Fi or cellular on these guys, but you would have to connect to Wi-Fi briefly, get those maps downloaded, just to be clear with everybody.
Right.
But it does give you that capability for group tracking and messaging.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Also, weather.
Weather is really important, too, for people.
For people if they're, you know, off the grid, because, you know, the weather can change, and it could be a flash flood or just about anything.
So you, it's really nice to have to prepare an event of bad weather in the area that you're going to be in.
Now, let me bring in sort of the bad news for people.
There's going to be a price increase on the bivvy stick hardware and service costs, as I understand it.
I mean, you can explain, but I've asked you to extend the grandfathering period of the current price until June 17th because, you know, give people a few days after this interview goes live.
But what happens after June 17th?
What goes up exactly?
So now it's like, so pretty much everything, satellite phones, we're seeing increase in everything.
Vivi announced to us that June 1st, this was effective June 1st, that the price of the hardware went up by 25%, but we're going to keep that for free, so we're not going to increase anything.
So we're going to go ahead and take that cost.
And then also they announced that they're going to increase their service by 25%, and that we kind of can't.
Take and stay in business.
So the prices are going to go up.
The $55 plan goes up to $69, and that includes just unlimited and insurance.
The Galileo plan goes from $69 to $79, and that includes Galileo insurance.
And the service.
In the Bivy.
$89 plan will include everything that Eric just...
So with that, you still get everything, and you get a smartphone with it that's going to come to you pre-programmed, so you don't have to do anything.
You just take it, power it on, and start texting.
And what's that going to go up to?
That's the price we chose, $89.
Oh, okay, so that will be $89.
Because that's the new.
That's the new service.
Okay, got it.
Okay.
As Eric was saying, if you want to add grouping, group messaging, that's going to be $10 on any of those funds.
For each BIVI person, not just one.
Each person needs to have the group enabled.
And if you already have a BIVI and you're listening to this and you want to enable that, just reach out to us and we can enable it on your account.
And then how much is...
30 days to try.
Okay.
All right.
Good to know.
What about the solar panel and the battery bank?
How much is that?
The long range kit is $179.
That includes charger, battery, solar.
And then we have a survival kit, which is that plus the mount and the Faraday bag that's $209.
I think it's the better deal, $209 for all those accessories.
But some people may already have some of those pieces so they can mix and match.
I think this is the best offer you've put together yet because it avoids, you know, the confusion of the app and the syncing it and how it works.
I mean, people just open this up, you know, charge both devices if they're not already charged, you know, like launch the phone and it connects with the Bivy and you can start texting immediately.
You don't have to configure it.
It's done.
Super easy.
So thank you for putting that together.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Absolutely.
Keep us posted, and we'll do this again soon.
And then, folks, go to sat123.com.
If you're watching this before June 17, 2022, you can beat the price increases.
After that, everything's going up.
Everything.
At least it's not going up as much as food is, or gasoline, so think about that.
But thank you, both of you, Eric and Tina, for joining me today.
today.
It's been a pleasure.
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