How High is Your AP?

DeAshcroft writes "The New York Times has a piece [give up your data] on the wiring of Everest. Tsering Gyaltsen, the grandson of one of Sir Edmund Hillary's orignal summit-conquering Sherpas is bringing the net to the mountain (presumably bringing the mountain to the net was even more difficult). He's attracted a great set of 'technologists' to make this happen, and, best of all, it means the locals get access (including a school of about 250 students), not just the rich geeks who come to town to climb the thing."

Comments

Bullet Points

[kwenda]

Tsering Gyaltsen, the grandson of the only surviving Sherpa to have accompanied Hillary on [his] famed climb, is planning to build the world's highest Internet cafe at base camp... Wireless radios will be positioned on moving glaciers, and gear must be insulated against temperatures far colder than they were designed to withstand. Mr. Gyaltsen had set up a satellite Internet link and cybercafe in Namche Bazar, a six-day hike below the Everest base camp, and was trying to figure out how to make it more available to his neighbors. Then one night over a beer, he and a friend who works for the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a nonprofit environmental group that is responsible for disposing of the mounds of garbage on Everest, hatched the idea for an Internet cafe at base camp. Jim Forster [of Cisco] eagerly donated three Wi-Fi radios on behalf of his company. The network will consist of a small satellite dish, planted about 1,500 feet above base camp, that can provide two-way communications. Because the dish must operate from firm ground, it cannot be used directly at base camp, which is on a moving glacier. The $10,000 satellite dish, which Mr. Gyaltsen purchased with a bank loan and funds from Square Networks, will connect to the cybercafe at base camp over the Wi-Fi radios. The dish will beam data to a satellite in orbit and to an Internet service provider in Israel. Mr. Gyaltsen was incommunicado for a couple of days because some drunken climbers in Namche Bazar had tripped over the wires connecting his Internet cafe to his satellite dish there. Mr. Gyaltsen and the pollution committee, which will technically own the radios, are still deciding what to charge users. They are considering a flat fee of $2,000 to $5,000 per expedition, which can number 5 to 20 people. That price might sound steep, but Mr. Gyaltsen says it paled in comparison with the cost of the expedition itself, typically $65,000 a person. The satellite link and Internet service will cost the operators less than $1,000 a month for the climbing season. Any profits will go to the pollution committee.

Imagine how cool it would be

[Omkar]

for a grade school teacher to be in contact with his/her class while climbing Everest? The educational possibilities for everyone are huge. I aslo think, however, that more effort should have been put into improving meatspace infrastructure in Nepal, or getting rid of those pesky rebels.

Re:Good.

[phliar]

One more detail that's important: Sagarmatha is the Nepali name for Mt. Everest. Why does the "Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee" need to exist? Because all those goddamn mountaineers have trashed the mountain. There's a hundred years of discarded tents, oxygen bottles, and just plain trash there. It's fitting that when the CEO pays for his little Everest adventure, he puts in a couple of thousand to clean up the mess.

This seems to be an idea that's good wherever you look at it from.