You are driving across New Mexico and suddenly your American built automobile does the inevitable, and dumps the contents of it's oil system on the sticky hot tarmac. After coasting to a stop next to some cactus, you reach over and pick up your cell phone to call AAA. Blasted! No reception!!

No worries, you simply go to the "EMERGENCY BEACON" menu and select "BREAKDOWN" from the list of selections. Instantly your phone turns off all normal celluar phone functions and becomes a high powered transmitter. It pulses a coded burst transmission at many times the normal wattage used for communication.

Many miles away a cell phone tower recieves a faint signal, a computer then decodes the signal to determine the type of emergency and dispatches the proper help. Within half an hour a tow truck arrives to your rescue and it's all possible to your nifty phone.
-- KLRico, Oct 23 2003

REI says FCC allows PLBs to be sold in USA http://www.rei.com/...eases/03beacon.html
acronym-tastic [krelnik, Oct 04 2004]

E911 Emergency Location http://www1.sprintp...bmUID=1066946113958
Its the "E911" feature. [Letsbuildafort, Oct 04 2004]

So you want a "Personal Locator Beacon" (PLB) integrated with your cell phone, is that it? See link.
-- krelnik, Oct 23 2003


Yes indeed, something similar... except with diffrent coded signals to indicate diffrent types of distress. And also without a $600 price tag.
-- KLRico, Oct 23 2003


Misread as "Emergency Cell Phone Bacon" and thought perhaps Rods_ had found a way to migrate the fax technology over to mobiles.
-- waugsqueke, Oct 23 2003


Nokia puts out a phone for Sprint networks which features an emergency GPS locator in the phone

E911 Emergency Location Capable Features an embedded Global Positioning System (GPS) chip necessary for utilizing the E911 emergency location services where available.

[see link]
-- Letsbuildafort, Oct 23 2003


I understand what you're thinking of here....out of reach of the cell tower, more power would get a signal somewhere. Problem is once you lose a close tower, boosting the signal could lead to one of many fun radio anomaies, and you could still be unfindable...Of course, if you could somehow accompany the signal with a location beacon, via the handy built in GPS unit, that would be cool.

But, I think blanket cell phone coverage might get here more quickly than trying to get the cell companies to add this to their phones...
-- thirteen113, Oct 23 2003


...or ten megaphones in series; do it the old fashioned way...
-- silverstormer, Oct 24 2003


Or a small cylinder of helium that inflates a balloon which trails a wire aerial, all of which pops out of the top of the phone at the press of a button.
-- oneoffdave, Oct 24 2003


another plus for pigeons.

<°¯)
( ( ) }<
; ;
-- po, Oct 24 2003



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