Emergency pager with global coverage and ear piercing alerts [closed]

Question

I'm the only server admin for my brother's online retail business. I spend a lot of time travelling internationally and am often outside of GSM coverage. I'm looking for a alert delivery system (pager, sms to a backup phone, etc) which meets the following requirements:

• Small enough to carry all the time
• Global coverage, ideally much broader than GSM
• Battery life measured in weeks (or maybe days) not hours

Options I've considered:

• Iridium pager, $500 + approx $40/month, uncertain coverage indoors.
• Globalstar satellite phone, $500 + $700/year, only 36 hour standby, bulky

Is there a service or device I'm missing which will fit this requirement? Something like the findmespot.com service but for receiving messages would be ideal.

For the record, options I've considered which would not work:

• Traditional pager, coverage is limited and always single country
• GSM mobile, coverage is patchy outside urban areas

Answer 1

The only options I know of are the Satellite options, and you found both of them. Those are the only systems that have global coverage no matter where you are. And as you found out, Satellite requires both bulk and poor battery life; and will remain so until the sat operators upgrade all of their satellites which will take a decade and several billion dollars.

I'm afraid there is no good, relatively cheap solution to handling always-on-call personell and frequent global travel. The only solution I know of is to plan your pager infrastructure before every trip, and either don't travel to places where you can't get coverage or put an alternate system of some kind in its place. Yes, it's labor and expense. Possibly enough labor to justify another person for pager-duty.