A story now, for all the members of the extreme ironing fraternity out there (or whatever the next daft extreme sport is… probably extreme sneezing by now), as news has come through that mobile phone coverage is set to extend into an area where you wouldn’t really expect it to appear.
Or, in other words, the top of Mount Everest.
According to Tech Shout, the antennas use a satellite uplink to route calls back down to a sea-level network, but on the ground (well, on the mountain, which is admittedly stretching the definition of ‘on the ground’ a bit), it’ll act just like a normal phone network. Although I’m presuming it’ll be a bit more resistant to cold, since I’d imagine it can get raaaaaaaaaaaather nippy up Everest…
The masts they’ve put up can be used by both GSM phones (so any British climbers with something like a Samsung Solid will be sorted) and CDMA phones (so our American brethren, lucky people that they are, would be able to take a Palm Pre up there if they so chose), although I dread to think what the roaming rates’d be to ring someone from up on the roof of the world.
And although I joke, surely anyone can see the benefit of having them up there. If you’ve fallen down a 93 foot deep crevasse, it’s going to at least be a bit of comfort to know your mate who was actually looking where he was going can ring for help. Since, you know, there’s plenty of flat ground on Mount Everest, it’s just that most of it’s vertical…
And hey, if you take the Sony Ericsson Idou with you, just imagine the awesome photos you’ll bring back.
Are you a climber, or an extreme sneezer? Would you use your mobile phone up Everest? Leave us a comment and have your say!
June 16th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
[...] It does beg the question, though, of exactly where he’s planning on taking the phone. Temperatures of seventy-below imply either somewhere polar, or somewhere up the top of an enormous, whacking great mountain. You know the one. It’s got the same name as a double-glazing company. But the thing is, he’s just finished a stroll up that big ol’ mountain, which would’ve been the most likely candidate, since mobile coverage is all set to extend up Everest. [...]