There are few places my GSM phone doesn’t work in Ireland. Even abroad, thanks to the roaming agreements of the network, I am rarely out of touch.
Yet there are many TV programmes about shipwrecks and plane crashes on remote islands where “the vessels radio won’t broadcast”, why don’t people use their mobile phones? Well assuming they were not shattered or lost amongst the wreckage the key problem is the signal strenght. Towers are expensive, and so are only positioned near cities and towns. Networks are not in the habit of constructing towers on uninhabited tropical island on the off-chance that someone rich yachtsman will want to call his office in New York mid-picnic.
The rich yachtsman, or drug smuggler, would have a satellite phone, in addition to a GSM. Infact a satellite phone is not as expensive as you’d think. In Australia they are routinely used, or so I ave been led to believe from watching MacLeod’s Daughters.
So, getting back on track, why isin’t every ocean going plane and vessel equipped with a scattering of satellite phones in buoyant international safety orange strong boxes. These could be used by the cliched survirors on a tropical island.
Unfortuntely that would not work on an island controlled by Dharma, or in Africa which satellite providers have deemed uneconomic?
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