Tina Blanco Interview: Satellite Phones and Solar Power for a Failing Grid
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Welcome everybody to this interview here at BrightVideos.com.
And as you know, our sponsor, one of our sponsors, is a satellite phone store.
And we are joined by Tina from the satellite phone store today, who's an ever popular guest.
And she's got some new things to show us, but also some concerns about the world.
What's happening?
So welcome, Tina.
Good to have you back.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Mike.
I'm actually in town.
I'm going to the CPAC.
So, you know, came by because I just love this area.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you're always welcome here.
And I think this is the first time you've seen our studio here, this new studio.
It is.
It is.
You know what's the most shocking thing is that the weather is so hot and humid.
Oh, yeah.
Welcome to Texas.
Yeah.
You know, you come from San Diego where it's a little dry and then cooler.
And then you come over here and you're like, oh, geez, I should have brought more cool clothing, not so much warm clothing.
Oh, well, this is, you should check out East Texas.
It's even more swampy.
Oh, wow.
But no, we're in the good part of Texas right here, Central Texas.
But what's happening in the world is concerning to everybody right now.
We're seeing the destruction of energy infrastructure.
We're seeing now a state of emergency declared in the country of the Philippines because of a lack of energy and a lack of fuel in particular.
Taiwan is down to less than 10 days of natural gas remaining to power the power grid.
And even though America is more abundant in natural energy than most countries, we are looking at global energy scarcity for a long time yet to come.
And so that's going to affect the power grid in many areas.
Yet your company is focused on providing solutions for people for a long time.
We've partnered with you for years about satellite phones and solar generators, et cetera.
What are you hearing right now from your employees and the customers about their concerns?
Yeah, so there is a huge concern.
Also, there's a huge concern with the government as well.
We're seeing a lot more sales coming in from areas that kind of slowed down after the Ukraine war.
Now it's like really starting to pick up again.
But I'm also hearing a lot of hacking too from the customers.
There's a lot more hacking, I think, not just on company levels, but also on personal levels.
Just cyber attacks?
Like hacking, like people are getting like hacks on their Gmail accounts.
It's just a lot of hacking going on.
So I think one of the things that we have to be aware of is that, you know, the hacking could happen at any time, but iridium phones cannot be hacked.
So one thing you know for sure, if everything gets, everything goes down, that you have your satellite phone, you can still make a call.
And Mike, if you recall in January when ATT was hacked, it wasn't everywhere in a country.
It was certain cities.
And I think that was, it was some kind of a weird thing that happened.
We still don't really know.
They haven't really said what really happened.
But like about 10 major cities, you couldn't use your ATT phone for a day or two.
So these, I think that was some kind of a test.
To me, that's what it felt like.
But at least the people that had satellite phones could still make calls.
And having a satellite phone is always a good thing because when there is an emergency, when something does happen that you don't know, but what if there's an earthquake in California?
Cell towers will go down.
I mean, 100% cell towers, even a small earthquake, they're usually down.
So having a satellite phone is very, very crucial for preppers.
Well, as you know, I mean, I don't travel without my sat phone.
Actually, I have two for that very reason, because you never know when something crazy is going to happen.
It wasn't too long ago that people were at the Anarco Pulco event festival in Mexico.
And then all of a sudden there was an outbreak of cartel violence and then people were stranded there for over a week.
I interviewed some of them.
And what if the local cell towers go down?
What if the power grid goes down?
How do you make a call?
And right now, with war breaking out, expanding out of the Middle East to more and more regions of the world, the power grid is less and less reliable.
Yeah.
I agree.
And then with the satellite phones, we have heard over and over from people when there is an emergency, they're like, it's so worth it having it because having that peace of mind to be able to call your friends and family to let them know the situation that you're fine is priceless.
And then also allowing your neighbors, I mean, we've seen it over and over and over with, you know, Helene, Hurricane Maria, you know, the fires, the Acapulco, a hurricane that was supposed to be just a few years ago,
it was supposed to be just a tropical storm.
It hit at category five.
So there was no communication other than satellite communication if you wanted to get out of there.
So absolutely, you're absolutely right, not just to have just as an emergency, don't leave home without it.
If you travel, especially if you travel outside of the country, make sure you take your satellite phone with you because that could be your lifesaver.
I just want to remind everyone that satellite phones work on 100% of the earth.
So it doesn't matter.
They can't be hacked.
They're satellite.
You've got your cell tower with you wherever you go.
So no matter where you are on the planet, you'll be able to make a call to anyone from anywhere to anywhere and also send a text message from anywhere to anywhere.
Including from a ship.
From anywhere on Earth.
Anywhere on Earth.
Yeah, yeah.
If you're stranded, so many people's lives have been saved because of an Iridium phone.
When boats go down, if they're sailing.
I mean, we've heard a lot of stories from people getting stunned by a scorpion or a snake or we even had a guy who stepped into a lion's trap with his foot.
So he had the satellite phone and he was able to call for help.
And this was in Africa.
Oh, my.
Yeah.
So it took years for his foot to heal, but he says that the satellite phone saved his life.
Wow.
Yeah.
Maybe lions should have satellite phones too in Africa, you know.
So the website, folks, is s-at123.com, sat123.com.
And the satellite phone store is a regular sponsor of our channel.
But you do more than satellite phones.
You also do solar generators.
And I think right now, this is a really critical time because, again, we're seeing a global energy infrastructure being destroyed.
Even the nation of Qatar has lost some percentage of its natural gas production capability.
And they're saying the repair time is three to five years.
That's right now.
And who knows what could happen, you know, this weekend, right?
But I don't have a lot of certainty that the power grid is going to stay up.
So talk to us about the solar generators that your company has and how that can help people when there's an off-grid situation.
Yeah.
So we saw the freeze just a couple months ago, the big freeze.
And we saw a huge increase in people wanting to get a generator the very next day.
And we're like, wait a minute, you can't ship a generator overnight because they're battery, right?
So you can't put it on a plane.
So they have to go ground.
We do have them in inventory.
We couldn't get them out there.
People were like, you know, they were going everywhere to buy them.
They were going to Home Depot.
Everywhere in the areas where the freeze was, everybody's like, well, there's no one has them.
Everybody, look, it's so good to just be prepared because anything can happen.
You've got, you know, we saw what happened in the Midwest with the freeze and people had no electricity for in some areas in Tennessee for like a week or two.
Be prepared because no one knows the emergencies that could happen.
So it doesn't matter where you are, I think in the country.
I think you should have at least one backup generator and a solar panel.
So this way you can keep your essentials.
Maybe you want to keep your refrigerator going.
Maybe you want to keep the heater, the AC, whatever it is that you want, we have them available.
You can power your whole house or you could just power a few items.
You can plug in your refrigerator.
And it starts out like we have packages with a generator and a solar panel together.
By the way, the solar panels are portable, so they're really easy to carry.
They're not very heavy.
Even 400, even the 400 watts, you can actually carry it.
It's like about 50 pounds and it's got a handle.
So you should have, so we have them.
They start out at like an 800 and it's just a basic things, necessities, all the way up to like 10,000 if you want to have everything powered on for a long period of time.
Yeah, it takes a lot of power to run a heater, air conditioner, refrigerator, et cetera.
I want to be clear with the audience that, you know, a $1,000 battery device isn't going to power your air conditioning.
Yeah, it will power like a small heater, space heater, and, you know, fans and things like that.
But in order to have it hooked up to the house, you have to have, you know, a bunch of batteries piled up and you have to have an electrician to come and install it.
We have all of that.
You can ask our experts on all of that on how to do it, but at least get something.
And that's what the folks that were in Tennessee and other areas that needed these products said that they wish they had something.
But they're prepared now because they bought it.
A lot of them bought their products after the storm.
So they've received them already.
So the next emergency, they're prepared.
But here in America, we do need to be a little bit more prepared because our power grid is so sensitive.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My friend Ty Bollinger, you know, the truth about cancer, his house had no power for a week, I think.
Yeah.
He's in Tennessee.
And, you know, life gets very difficult without electricity.
But unfortunately, this is what's going to be experienced all over the world more and more with energy scarcity that's coming.
You know, the core infrastructure that creates this energy abundance that we all enjoy, you know, air conditioning and water pumps and, you know, whatever, electric vehicles, right?
This core infrastructure is taking hits right now.
And I think we're going to go through a very difficult time for the next few years just to rebuild.
That's if there's, if war stops now and there's no indication that it's going to.
So there's never been a more important time, you know, to have backup communications, backup power, backup food, medicine, all that.
Yeah, I agree.
And it doesn't even have to be like, you know, it's not even just the hacking.
Our infrastructure can be hacked.
Anything can happen.
But I mean, you and I have seen, and so many things happen.
It's like, oh, you know what?
Nothing ever happens in Tennessee.
Well, you know what?
We saw that happen.
You say nothing ever happens in Texas or, you know, in California.
And then next thing you know, the fires is, look, nowhere is safe.
And anywhere you live in America, be prepared.
You know, have whatever it is that you need.
You need food, water, you know, filtration.
I think you have all of that.
You need communication.
You need, you know, electricity.
You need just the basics.
And it's not that expensive just to have a small generator with some solar panel to be able to just plug in your small essentials so that you can still connect with the world.
And, you know, you can also get a Starlink.
So this way, when the internet goes down, you've got Internet.
So we have all of that.
You can call our office and talk to an expert to get a full package.
Yeah, you offer the Starlink systems as well.
We do.
Yeah.
Starlink123.com.
Yeah.
So you can go to SAT123.com to get everything.
And then for the generators where you'll find the specials that are like about 40% off when we match everything for you, the generator and the solar panel and everything is already pre-done for you.
That you get about 40% off.
Go to be ready123.com.
Oh, and I want to be clear: when you're saying generator, it's the solar panels and a battery storage system with battery management built in, the charge controller, the inverter, all in one.
It's not like a gas generator or a diesel generator.
Yeah.
So one of the reasons why we don't carry the gas generators and the diesel is because when there is an emergency, all I've seen in like, you know, because I've been in many, many of them because we head out there and, you know,
we help people and everything is that the gas stations, the lines are so long and they're always closed.
Like even before Hurricane Milton in Florida, all the gas stations were out of gas.
Yeah.
So if you didn't fill your gas tank a week before the hurricane, you wouldn't be able to find.
And then you can't drive anywhere because you use up your gas.
There's no gas station.
So you got to be prepared with solar.
Solar, the sun never goes away when there is an emergency.
So you can always charge your generators.
Yeah, I was talking about this at a podcast.
I said that sunlight is the one thing that the governments of the world haven't figured out how to take away from you and create scarcity or to tax it.
They can't tax the sun.
So you get free energy from the sun, tax-free also.
Think about that, that they can't really block, you know.
But lithium iron phosphate, that's the chemistry that I think most of these batteries use right now.
The good news is that that has become over the years quite a bit more affordable.
So I haven't seen price increases in these products, even though there's inflation out there.
The products that you're offering are still stable in their pricing.
But I'm not sure how long that's going to last given supply chains, what's happening in the world.
You talk about pricing a little bit.
Yeah.
So currently we have inventory.
So and so the pricing is the same.
So it is about 45% off when you like off MSRP.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So if you go to beready123.com, you'll see there's packages.
I think they start out at $800 and then they go all the way up to $10,000 if you want to get more batteries and more power into your house.
Or you can just get a small one so that you can just power your electronics, maybe a small one just to plug in your refrigerator because you don't want your food to spoil your freezer, things like that.
And keep in mind, you only need to plug in your freezer and refrigerator as long as you don't open it.
If you're out of electricity, you just need to plug them in like two hours and then unplug them and then plug them in two hours every like three or four hours.
As long as you don't open your refrigerator constantly, the food will be fine.
But those are the things that we have.
So, you know what?
I have my house, my house is all on generators.
So I don't use, I don't get a bill from San Diego Gas and Electric.
But what I do also for Christmas, I just get a little generator, just a little tiny one, and it powers my whole house with lights.
And then during the day, you know, the generator charges.
And then so it keeps my lights on.
Yeah.
It keeps my lights on the whole time.
And I don't, you know, I don't get a bill.
So there's a lot of things that you can do.
And that's only like about $500, $600 to do all of that.
Yeah.
So it's not that expensive.
I think people would be surprised on how inexpensive it is to get just a small generator.
Plus that's a portable unit.
You could put it in a vehicle.
If you needed to bug out somewhere, you could easily just pick it up and put it in a vehicle.
Those don't weigh that much.
Yeah, they don't weigh that much.
A lot of campers use them.
It's huge for the camping industry with the solar panel.
I mean, I camped out for a month and I used, I camped out for a month because I wanted to get away from the EMF.
Yeah.
So I didn't have that many electronics with me.
I just logged on to my Starlink like a few minutes, checked my emails, logged back off.
But yeah, that generator, small generator, portable, and a 120-watt solar panel kept everything going for me the whole month and I didn't need anything.
120 watts, that's it?
Yeah, 120 watts.
Yeah.
Wow.
Those things are really powerful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I camped in Nevada where there was a lot of sun.
Well, one of the shifts that's happening because of this current war in the Middle East and the destruction of hydrocarbon infrastructure is a lot more people are shifting into solar and battery options, especially as redundant systems.
Were you aware that many of the car companies that make EVs that are sold in America, Toyota's coming out with one, Hyundai, Kia, et cetera, that they have, what's it called,
vehicle to load feature where you can use the car's battery to power like your blender or your laptop or whatever.
You plug into an outlet because that's a massive battery.
So your car is kind of like a giant, well, it's a giant battery in those cases.
But then you do have to recharge it eventually.
Exactly.
And I think as California is moving more toward electric cars, during the summer, and I can't even imagine the summer.
I know last summer we had rollouts where they would say, you know, you have, it didn't bother me because I have generators, but my friends and family, where they have two or three hour rollouts where they just turn off your electricity so you couldn't be home for two or three hours.
But it was.
That was last summer?
That was last summer.
This summer, I think it might even be worse because I think the heat, it's going to be hotter.
It's been shown.
I mean, here we are in March, and it is hot out there.
It is really, really hot out there.
So I think, and then with more electric cars, I think there's going to be an issue in California for sure.
Yeah, the grid is really stressed by electric vehicles.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, they, they, they'll, for sure, they'll have rollouts.
Um, and they try to tell you not to charge your car until midnight and all that.
And now, if you did, if you did have a charger in your house and you charged your car during the day, your bill, and I have experience from that, her bill was like $1,600 before she realized that, oh,
it is better to buy gas than it is to charge the car.
And this is all in California.
I don't know about the rest of the world, or the rest of the country.
But California is a mess.
We have some really bad governments.
Well, we're not surprised to hear that.
You have your governor there.
Hopefully that changes the change.
Yeah, hopefully.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, bottom line is this is a very important time for people to think about being well prepared.
Your company provides several key categories of solutions, the satellite phones as well as the solar generators.
Is there anything else you offer that you want to mention before we wrap this up?
For this, I think that's it.
Just the satellite phones.
Look, the satellite phones are $1,300.
That phone that you have in Yahoo, our cost is about $1,300 for that phone.
They're not cheap.
We do give them away for free.
You just sign up on a monthly service.
It's like $95 a month for 24 months.
I think, Mike, about 22nd month is our break-even with the service and the phone.
That's the reason why we get people to sign up for that long.
And then after that, you're just month to month.
And you can cancel, keep the phone, you can downgrade, you can go on a standby.
You will own the phone.
But we've made it really easy for anybody.
So you don't have a sticker shock of $1,500 the first bill.
Your sticker shock is only going to be around $300 because you just pay the tax on the phone and one month of service.
That's it.
Well, these days, people are spending five grand on a GPU to do AI on their computer.
Sat phone's a lot cheaper than a good GPU.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
And that GPU uses a lot of power on top of that.
Yep.
Okay.
Well, the website, folks, is sat123.com.
There's also beready123.com and then starlink123.com if you want starlink service.
Thank you, Tina.
Thank you for supporting our platform and for offering these solutions to the public because thousands of our followers and viewers are also your customers.
And I know that you've helped save lives and I mean your technologies helping save lives and helping people out of emergencies and tight spots, you know, because of the sat phone communication.
So thank you for doing that.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Mike, your listeners are some of the best, friendliest people in the world.
I have to tell you that.
I just love them.
Sometimes, you know, they want to talk to me or, you know, and the call gets transferred and they're just so amazing.
And I just love them.
So yeah, thank you.
They're well-informed, high IQ.
Yeah.
You know, and they're the ones who aren't panicking in the middle of a crisis because they've already prepped.
You know, they've got the food, they've got the sat phones, they've got the backup, everything.
Yeah.
Yeah, they really are.
They're the most prepped people in this country.
When something does, if something does happen nationwide, they're the ones that will be thriving.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
They're also growing food, too.
They've got gardens.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Garden seeds.
Okay.
Well, folks, there you go.
Sat123.com is the website.
That's the satellite phone store.
They are our official sponsor.
And be sure to check out more interviews and coverage at brightvideos.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Bright Videos, and thank you for watching today.
Get prepared, everybody, because the world is about to become even crazier than it is already.
So have backup plans for everything.
Thanks for watching.
Take care.
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