By: Mark Lidikay
This has been circulating around the Internet lately:
“If you have ever been lost while hiking or stranded with a broken-down car, etc… and you notice your mobile phone is either low on juice or has no signal, here is a tip that very well may save your life. Change the voicemail on your phone to a message that gives your approximate location, the time, the date, your situation (lost, out of petrol, car broken down, injured etc…) and any special instructions such as your are staying with the car, you are walking toward a town etc. The best part of this is that even if your mobile phone dies or stops working, voicemail still works, so anyone calling your phone looking for you will hear the message and know where to find you or where to send help.”
The main issue with this is that you cannot modify your voicemail—or make any other changes—when there is no signal. Without a connection to a network, nothing can be sent from your phone, rendering it essentially useless. In that situation, you might as well use the battery for something else, like starting a fire.
In addition to being a passive form of communication—which requires someone to call you to retrieve information—updating your voicemail also consumes more power compared to other messaging methods. If you have enough battery power to change your voicemail, you might as well make a direct phone call to get assistance underway. Alternatively, you can use email or text messages to share your information. Sending texts requires less power and bandwidth than transmitting voice messages, as texts do not include graphics or audio. Furthermore, a text message will remain in your outbox until your device finds a cellular signal, increasing the likelihood that your message will eventually be delivered to its intended recipient.
If you know you are going in to areas that don’t have cell phone coverage, consider having an alternate means of communications such as FRS radio, CB radio , amateur radio , our NexEdge system