That’s already the case with most types of insurance. It ran out? You haven’t paid bills? and your house was hit by a tornado right after it ran out? Tough luck.
That said it may have a “using this feature binds you to a new agreement where you pay for all the time you discontinued our service”
I don’t think insurance is a good analog because insurance has very high payouts.
Not sure the cost for this feature but the marginal cost is likely really low. So a day of coverage would maybe cost a few cents or dollars since they are already including 2 years free without raising the price.
This is very different from a day of homeowners insurance where the payout is hundreds of thousands or millions. The marginal cost on insurance is very high.
Insurance is to make you whole financially after the fact not to response to a life and death emergency in the moment. This theory has been tried in at least one location wherein you were expected to pay annually for fire service or the fire department wouldn't put out your house and would instead insure that the fire didn't spread to the paying customers while they watched your home burn.
It's abhorrent. We ensure cell phones can always call 911 even without a plan for instance which unlike insurance is a nearly identical situation. The logical thing to do is just take it out of the hands of service providers by always requiring carriage of such a call in all circumstances and expecting OEMs/service providers to make back that money on device or service wherein such a device includes that function.
I would accept your argument if all handsets had this functionality built in. As it is now, only forthcoming devices from one MFG is availing this as an additional paid service with free introductory period.
If I had an Iridium handset and the sub ran out and I was adrift, would I still be able to make an emergency call?
That said it may have a “using this feature binds you to a new agreement where you pay for all the time you discontinued our service”