I am a beacon manufacturer (ACR) and thought I would insert a couple of comments that are general in nature.

Doug is spot on with his comments on batteries. Also, in an emergency, if you have a cell phone/GPS, Sat phone, and PLB, the only device you can rely on is a PLB. I read somewhere in this thread that

"There are also many instances when boats and planes go down and no signal is ever received."

Planes, yes; especially older C91a ELTs. Boats? I know of two instances in nearly twenty years where a 406 MHz EPIRB has failed to activate when deployed, and one was recent where the EPIRB deployed and was sucked into the boat by a Scupper Vent and went down with the vessel... The problem with ELTs and planes is the speed with wich many planes come in contact with the earth... and not relevant to a PLB discussion.

Secondly, and I'm not sure this is totally rellevant, but there is a place where they turn a blind eye to standards and where price is the primary motivating factor for safety equipment: Australia. In Australia 121.5 EPIRBs can still be purchased for around A$160.00. They are rotten EPIRBs. Most allow the use of off-the-shelf C or D batteries. In 1998 the Sydney - Hobart race resulted in the loss of 6 sailors lives, 55 people rescued from sailboats, 5 boats sank and 66 boats retired out of the 115 starters when multiple storms merged on the race. http://www.ussailing.org/safety/Studies/1998_sydney_hobart.htm

The interesting part is every single one of the boats in the race had an EPIRB. In short, the cheap Aussy beacons didn't work. By the way, the Australian's play loose with all the standards; life rafts, PFDs, etc. They've taken the "let's make it cheap so more people will have safety equipment" philosophy to the point where the safety equipment is practically worthless. Now today the Sydney-Hobart race organizers require all participants to carry 406 MHz EPIRBs, (see point 3 in the above link). Unfortunately, their government is doing everything within its power to loosen the standards on 406 transmitters--so beacons can be made cheaper. Their logic: 406 is too good. If we relax the standards 406 will still be better than the 121.5 beacons that failed.

The bottom line here is that we are a "for profit" company and if we could sell more beacons we would like that. If we could make them cheaper without sacrificing performance and quality, then we would do that...And We Are! PLB prices are coming down. Performance is going up and their size is getting smaller, so stay tuned.

Thanks.