Cell Phone Service For Mt. Everest? Because It's There

Talk about roaming cell phone coverage! Nepal Telecom is preparing to inaugurate coverage of Mount Everest next month, and the offering will include service for both GSM and CDMA handsets.

The service, which will be aided by satellite antennas located several thousand feet below the peak of the world's highest mountain, is being introduced by Nepal Telecom to serve the influx of mountain climbers scaling the peaks of the region. Mount Everest is 21,315 feet high. In recent years, climbers have used satellite phones linked directly to satellites to call from the mountain.

Nepal Telecom's approach calls for a series of satellite antennas to be set up below the heights of Mount Everest, and cell phone users can link to the NT network over them.

"We are planning to commence the service by mid-June," said Anoop Ranjan Bhattarai, NT's satellite division chief, according to media reports from Kathmandu. "We hope it will provide an alternative to those currently relying on satellite phone services."

In 2007, in anticipation of China's Olympics, China Mobile enlisted a team of porters to set up a cell phone station on the summit of Everest so climbers carrying Olympic torches could reach the mountaintop. Rod Baber, an English climber, made a call on the China Mobile configuration from the summit in May 2007. He had to strap batteries of his Motorola handset to his body so they wouldn't freeze.

Bhattarai believes NT's satellites surrounding Mount Everest will be able to handle 3,000 calls simultaneously. "But," he said, "we will increase the number of terminals depending on the traffic in the region."

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