Or the game console model - the device is worthless (can't even use the 911 feature) without purchasing a service plan. Most likely it's an economy of scale thing. The company seems to think this will sell to a larger audience than PLBs, whose capability they downplay in their advertising (see the TV ads with Les Stroud on the SPOT site). If sales continue to climb, maybe the PLB manufacturers will take note and drop their prices.

After reading the online PDF manual it appears SPOT was intended to have a text messaging capability, so maybe it's not too farfetched to hope for that feature on the next model. IMO, that would sell the device (text from anywhere) better than the location feature. Heck, I pay $120/year for text messaging on my phone. What would be even better would be a tri-band version of SPOT, with the addition of the 406 Mhz Cospas-Sarsat and 121.5 Mhz homing signals. That would make it a true PLB.