Less than “unlimited” isn’t meaningfully cheaper to provide. It’s $144/year and not thousands per use exactly and exclusively because you can’t buy it when you need it.
If you could buy it on demand, 99.999% of revenue disappears because there’s no reason to pay for a subscription, and you have to massively raise the price per use for the service to break even.
A dedicated satellite device like inReach is $144/year for unlimited SOS and 10 standard text messages
I think you’re overestimating the cost of data
Less than “unlimited” isn’t meaningfully cheaper to provide. It’s $144/year and not thousands per use exactly and exclusively because you can’t buy it when you need it.
If you could buy it on demand, 99.999% of revenue disappears because there’s no reason to pay for a subscription, and you have to massively raise the price per use for the service to break even.