Sign in / up

back to article Everest cell tower hibernates for the winter

The mobile-phone base station constructed 6,500 metres up Mount Everest has been dismantled until next summer, as not a lot of people want to make calls from the mountain during the winter months. Carried up the mountain by teams of yaks, and constructed in an environment with only 38 per cent of the oxygen at sea level, the …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Michael Motal
    Coat

    not 38%

    There's the same amount of oxygen up there, but partial pressure of oxygen (and everything else) is different (lower), making less oxygen get into our blood (simply put).

    0 0
  2. Fluffykins Silver badge

    Bloody cellphone base stations

    Why couldn't the poor sap be given an Iridium phone. That way there's no need to dump yet more junk in the place!!

    0 0
  3. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    What would Dom Joly say?

    <crap Nokia noise>

    I'M ON THE SUMMIT!

    0 0
  4. Daniel B.
    Coat

    Incoming call...

    ring ring ...

    I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!!

    *beep beep: Low Battery*

    I made it! I'm in. ... *power off*

    Hell if you'll ever be able to find a charger up there!

    0 0
  5. Rick Brasche
    Flame

    Why something so simple as a tower?

    since China's had such a big hard-on for showing off the result it's massively increased military expenditures, why don't they do some sort of UAV based system or aerostat, or some other bit of techno-killbot boffinry? (ack, channeled Mr. page for a moment there)

    Or has their program for 'accidentally" poisoning the children of other nations taken higher priority than their Olympic prestige?

    0 0
  6. Graham Dawson Silver badge

    This is one of the dafter ideas I've heard...

    Everest, believe it or not, still kills people. There's a corpse *sitting* on the final slope of a guy who sat down and couldn't get up again. From what I was told he spent almost four hours on the phone with his wife pleading for him to get up. I think he's still holding it.

    Of course that was before the phone masts. Those satellite phones get pretty good coverage. Now it'll be "Yeah, I'm on Everest! EVEREST! THE MOUNTAIN! No, it's crap!"

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like