The highest hot spot on Earth is now on Mt. Everest now that 3G service is accessible in Nepal from a Swedish wireless carrier. The chief executive of Ncell, a subsidiary of TeliaSonera, said the highest video call ever was made from the Mount Everest base camp Friday. The introduction of a 3G network in Nepal gives climbers the freedom to connect worldwide from the Everest summit and introduces one of one of the most remote areas of the world to the rest of civilization. Source for this article – 3G service on Mt. Everest allows climbers to surf from the summit by Newsytype.com.
Going to new heights with a 3G base station
The 3G at Mount Everest will benefit climbers a ton. They had to use satellite phones to talk to anybody while up there before. Ncell has set up coverage with a series of eight 3G base stations. The highest is in the village of Gorakshep, near the Mount Everest base camp at 17,000 feet. Everest 3G will mostly be used for emergency communications and real time weather reports. The locals all have to pay to do anything with calling or the web to use satellite phones. Now, Ncell has made a way for locals to surf the web, send e-mails and make calls more easily.
Communicating when on Everest
3,000 people have made the trip to Mt. Everest and climbed it. This has all been since 1953 when Sir Edmund Hilary first climbed the mountain. The nearest telegraph office would get the messages from climbers back then. That’s because runners had to be used to send messages. Carrying the equipment for a satellite phone weighed you down 220 pounds. This was how much it weighed when the climber living in Nepal, Veikka Gustafsson, first came to the Humalayas, reports TeliaSonera. Since 2007, the only coverage at Mount Everest in China had been the partial service from China Mobile.
3G affects Nepal
Telecommunication services is something less than one-third of the people in Nepal have access to. The jagged mountain makes it really difficult to build cellular towers. Also, building land-based networks is practically impossible. Gusaffson said, in reference to the 3G network:
“It’s hard for people in the Western world to even imagine what it means for people living in distant villages in valleys separated by high mountains when they now make their first phone call to relatives or are able to contact a doctor over the phone.”
Right now in Nepal, you will find 3.7 million that work with Ncell, although the 3G service will make that rise. $100 million is being invested into Nepal by TeliaSonera. The goal is that by the end of 2011, 90 percent of people will have mobile coverage.
BBC News
bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11651509
Daily Tech
dailytech.com/Worlds Highest AboveWater Peak Everest Gets Internet Access/article20026.htm
PC Magazine
pcmag.com/article2/,2817,2371750,00.asp
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