[nonrandomstring]

Yes the Garmin stuff looks great. For some of those features you seem to need a renewable monthly subscription. I'm looking for products that build the connection cost into the one-off price, not out of cheapness but for more reliability/security than a subscription. Would be awful to finally need an emergency device and find the data plan had expired (as is now the case with phone networks that destroy your number when it goes unused regardless of how much credit you've charged it with). That's specifically one of the cost models I want to move away from. The only thing I should need to pack is some spare batteries.

[qbasic_forever]

It's annoying but Garmin has a plan where you can pause it when you're not using it. It's something like $5 a year when not in use, then you flip it on (just go to the website) and it charges you the rate and gives you full service again. So if you're not using it in the winter you don't have to pay the big regular monthly cost.

Unfortunately you will not find a satellite comm device without some kind of monthly service plan, it's how they base their business models.

Get the Garmin inreach, it is absolutely worth it and two way communication is critical in a real rescue situation.

[dataflow]

Kinda wish there was a pricing model along the lines of "top-up with $X of credit that is guaranteed not to remain valid for 5+ years, and charge it $100 for the first message, and $0.10/message thereafter for the next month, with the ability to send a predetermined test to the company server at a cost of $1/test", or something like that. Surely this kind of a model must be viable at some price point?