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grid shut down

3758920
6 months ago

If there is a complete grid shut down will these things still work? For example will I be able to send a message from one inreach/app to a second inreach/app?

  • 0 6 months ago

    What do you mean by "grid shut down"? Power, cell network, Internet, something else?

    inReach message travel a complicated route. Assuming we are sticking to classic inReach, without the confusion introduced by Messenger app compatibility. Device > Iridium satellite overhead > Iridium satellite mesh network to a satellite over a ground station > ground station > Internet > Garmin servers. From there, it depends on the target. For SMS messages, Garmin server > SMS gateway > cell provider network > recipient phone. For email, Garmin servers > Internet > recipient's email server > Internet > recipient. For inReach to inReach, Garmin servers > Internet > Iridium ground station > Iridium satellite overhead > Iridium satellite mesh network > Iridium satellite from which the device requested its messages.

  • 0 6 months ago in reply to twolpert

    Yes all the above.  No power no cell service no internet.  Can one inreach communicate with a second inreach

  • 0 6 months ago in reply to 3758920

    No. iR to iR still goes through the Garmin servers. You would think this would not be necessary, but it is.

    That said, complete failures are rare. IMO, the best way to judge that is to look at SOS messaging outage history. (You can view status and history at status.inreach.garmin.com.) I cannot remember any SOS outages, ever - and there would certainly be an SOS outage in a complete failure. There are lots of failures for the parts that depend heavily on Garmin programming. For example, activations/plan changes/suspend and resume have become completely unreliable lately. Various kinds of message delivery (SMS, email) have had outages. But SOS just never goes down.

  • 0 6 months ago in reply to twolpert

    Thank you for the reply.  Would anything else work in that scenario?  Perhaps sat phones?  I wouldn't think hand held short wave would work because of the need of repeater towers.

  • 0 6 months ago in reply to 3758920

    Possibly sat phones. They are going to be independent of anything other than the satellite network itself. Sill some chance for failure there, I guess. But much smaller "failure surface".