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Searching for a Satellite Pager?
mcolgin asks: "I need a satellite pager! Why? I own a dot-com and as the only technical person responsible for the 7 servers needed to run the site and it's automated delivery systems, I've got to find out about any problems, before my customers/suppliers do; no matter where I am, especially when I'm: camping in Eastern-Washington; back-country skiing in Whistler; or driving down to Oregon for Mother's Day. I've tried every type of cellphone and pager I can find, but nothing gets a message to me once I get out of populated areas and away from freeways. So, I started looking into Satellite pagers; but I swear, I can't find anything in the local Seattle, WA area and only a couple listings online from Google searches. This has got to be a problem that the Slashdot community has run into, before. Any suggestions?"
Iridium who does satellite phones also does global pagers. The pagers are not too expensive about 150.00 dollars US, but the service is about 127 dollars a month for unlimited pages or you can get the basic plan that i think is around 56 dollars it gives you about 150 pages per month. If your stuff doesn't go down that much i'd get the basic plan. A place that I know that sells it is InfoSat YOur other option is have your cell phone text messaged. I usually never not have service. If I do it's not for very long, and when i get back into a populated area or get reception i get my messages right away. The point is, what if you get a page but you can't call anyone because you have no reception. That would fustrate me more.
The reason you only got "a couple listings" is because Iridium is pretty much the only game in town, and there's pretty much only one pager. There weren't exactly a lot of devices made for this market. It's no small feat to operate a global voice/data satellite network. There are only a "couple" of other providers (geared more toward government, military, and enterprise, and without "pager" offerings): InMarSat and GlobalStar, for example.
The Motorola 9501 for Iridium is, as I said, essentially the only satellite pager:
http://www.iridium.com/product/iri_product-detail. asp?productid=445
http://shop.infosat.com/pagers/
http://www.infosat.com/services/iridium/motorola_9 501_pager.htm
http://www.satwest.com/satellite_pagers_mi9501.htm l
More...
Of course, you may be interested in a satellite handset, not strictly a "pager", than can also get email and numeric messages. Keep in mind, though, that all of these satellite devices are subject to normal satellite requirements, e.g., line of sight to the sky. Yes, sometimes they'll "kind of" work in vehicles, wooded areas, etc., and you will get confirmed delivery of messages once you're again in range, but these things aren't exactly set up to work in houses and buildings. You may have no choice but to have a conventional cell phone/pager AND a satellite device for when you're remote, and have your automated systems and/or people try both devices.
For others in a similar boat, but not quite as remote as the submitter, you may also consider a conventional 2-way or 1.5-way nationwide pager, which provides delivery confirmation and re-attempts if you're temporarily out of range. But if you know you're going to be out of range for a while, you pretty much restricted to something like one of the satellite solutions. Consider a mobile phone. Most providers' digital networks offer email service, numeric "paging", and even true TAP/IXO paging. Just look into a provider that covers your area(s).
A bit of history on Iridium: Iridium was the satellite phone service launched by Motorola on Sept 23, 1998, when the last satellite of its global constellation was in place. Handset prices (over $3000) and airtime fees (several dollars per minute), as well as attempting to market to ordinary folks doomed the service from the beginning. Motorola decided to end the Iridium service on March 17, 2000, at 11:59pm. After billions were spent on the 66 satellites, and the $1 million per month that it cost Motorola for Boeing operate the satellites, Motorola initiated plans to deorbit and destroy the constellation. Various investor groups attempted to save Iridium, and the Defense Department even provided $72 million to keep the satellites operational (in the face of concerns of debris from the deorbited satellites actually hitting someone on earth, which NASA pinned at 1 in 250). In any event, Iridium Satellite LLC successfully purchased the assets of the $7 billion Motorola Iridium program in November 2000 for a mere $25 million:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0011/16iridium/
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0103/29iridium/
The new Iridium, launched in March 2001, attempts to fix the shortcomings of the original by expanding beyond satellite voice telephone service, into data, video, realtime monitoring, and special applications in markets such as mining, oil/gas, m
Yea, sleep in the server room.
OK, so it took me all of three minutes to find what you are looking for.
First, I googled Satellite Pager and found out that Motorola used to make a pager called the 9501 for well known satellite phone company Iridium. Next, I checked a few of the first links. I found that the Motorola 9501 has been discontinued but originally retailed for $149.95. I also found that the service had a $100 activation fee and was $69 a month, and Iridium still offers it. Ahah! Theres something! So then I clicked on the seventh link down and found out that a company called World COmmunications Center sells refurbished ones for $195. You can buy the pager from them and activate it with Iridium's service. There's a link that says How to Buy on the WCC page that lists their phone numbers, including one in Portland, OR. Close enough for Seattle for ya?
Now I could probably find more, but I have to be back at work in 20 minutes and don't really feel like more googling. So enjoy, I hope this works for you.
Ask Slashdot: For When You're Just Too LazyTM
And oh yeah...FP!
I googled "satellite pager service" and got this:
S atellite+Pager+Service/page/6
http://www.wcclp.com/index.php/phpmPage/Services_
if by local to Washington you mean "anywhere on the planet", then this should work.
- Never leave town.
- Delegate some responsibilities to someone else.
Entrepreneurs also need to be able to "let go" just a little bit by hiring responsible folks to share the burden of situations like this. If you continue to try doing things all on your own like this, I'm inclined to think you'd have nothing but headaches, followed by burn-out.I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
I mean, it's a satellite pager! Isn't the idea that it works anywhere? A Google search for satellite pagers turns up plenty.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Get your life in order. Either hire someone to
give you the free time, or realize you're in a
phase of your life where fun vacations are not an option. Get used to this. Pagers will always fail.
With a human, you can at least use employement
to make sure they're at the keyboard.
I personally recommend you examine your plans
to provide reliable service to your customers,
and critically evaluate whether advice from
slashdot is part of your solution matrix.
Takes many vacations...*check*
Is the only one responsible *check*
MUST maintain 7 servers (e-mail servers?) *check*
Talks about clients and his "dot-com business *check*
Question: Are you a SPAMMER?! Cause you sure fit the profile
This has got to be a problem that the Slashdot community has run into, before. Any suggestions?
Yes. The dot-com boom ended several years ago. Ditch this company and become a waiter, before you go retroactively bankrupt.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Hire a lackey. Find a guy/gal down at your local LUG. Seattle has lots of underemployed, overqualified geeks at the moment. Show him the ropes.
Sure, he (please substitute she if appropriate) won't know how to fix everything. But he will call your customers to let them know a technical person *is* on site, ring your cell incessantly till you pick up, put your pager on the wardialer.. And for simple stuff, IE, service didn't come up on restart, or UPS warning some of the batteries just went south, you just saved yourself a trip back to Seattle.
.sig: Now legally binding!
I don't know about satellite pagers. But if you are the single point of failure for an operation you own, large enough to require 7 servers to operate, I suggest you examine your budget, and maybe your ego. And find room to train an alternate who can relieve you of that duty sometimes. Because your satellite pager might survive your preemption, by a family crisis, or a skiing/camping/driving accident, or a really good night's "sleep". But your system won't survive a chance outage at that unavoidable downtime. If you care about your customers/suppliers, you'll ensure remove your system's 24/7/365 dependence on that part with less than 99.9999% availability.
--
make install -not war
Any when you get your page saying all your servers are down, what exactly will you do then hundreds of miles away from the NOC?
"When they invent bitch slaps that can go through a monitor you better f'ing duck" --deft (253558)
While this sounds plausible on the surface, what is the real use? Take the scenario at face value. He's camping in the woods somewhere. The pager goes off in the night. Let's say that he hosting an ecommerce site and the database keeps going down so products aren't showing up on the site. So, he packs up (an hour or so), drives back to Seattle (another 2-3 hours), and then rushes in wired on drive-thru coffee to fix the problem before anyone knows about it. Am I missing something?
Before you start with the whole "He can tell his IT people to fix the problem," remember that he said he is the only IT person in the company. What's he going to do, call his accountant and talk her through viewing the logs and using vi to edit the config files or something?
Wait! Maybe he plans to mind-meld with the sat-pager and surf the virtual net back to the server and fight the bugs like in Tron! This guy is cooler than I first thought. I'm in awe.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Erm, either your site isnt really so critical you can drop everything and head from the woods to fix it.. or you can pay a PFY to do it for you? btw - i liked the combination of http://www.digitalcandle.com/asterisk.html and http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2 004-January/032521.html
Brain(s): 0.0% user, 1.3% system, 0.1% nice, 98.6% idle
you're a good candidate for WiMax and VoIP.
Yesh, the last time I was in the woods a hundred miles from the nearest road I was amazed what the 802.11 sniffer was pulling in. I guess the grizzly bears use it to track the tastiest hikers or something and get out the word.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
<sarcasm> If you are that important, put in a roll-a-way and stay at work.</sarcasm>
You have two options..
1) You need to go and find a consulting firm who, for a fee, is willing to be avaialble when you're not. You probably want somebody who is not too big, and local too, so they'll be flexible. If you can work it right, you might even be able to get it where you just have to call them 30+ days in advance and schedule them for when you'll be out of range.
2) Simplify your operations. Anything that you can't explain in 5 minutes to a reasonably intelligent person is too complex. This will have two benefits. 1- simpler systems will tend not to break as often, as you can see the problems on cursory examination. 2- You can trust somebody who maybe isn't a sysadmin/uebercoder like you, but can handle a bash prompt.
I've adopted #2 now, but in the past had #1. #2 is _by far_ the better long term solution.
SpamapS -- Undernet #Linuxhelp
One of the spaceflightnow.com links above says...
A total of 88 satellites were launched beginning in May 1997, but several malfunctioned after arriving in orbit.
Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space built the satellite platforms and said the craft would operate up to eight years. The Iridium constellation is divided into six groups of satellites circling 421 miles above Earth.
So... 1997 + 8 years = 2005.
Are they replacing satellites that have reached EOL ?
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
You could do it with packet and a tower in your back yard and a few hundred dollars initial investment in gear.
1. Get your license.
2. Throw up a tower.
3. Get a pII 300 for a packet box. plug it into the network. Run nagios. There's some linux scripts for getting nagios to talk to *nearly_any* software. Such as aprs. using X.25 or similar.
4. Get a laptop for your car and an HF antenna + mobile 100w rig.
5. Have it send out automated heartbeats every ten minutes w/callsign. And warnings when it's worse.
6. Have lappy pump juice into a claxon or similar, mounted on your car under the hood.
Good for a few hundred miles.
Considering my mom talked with people around the world with 100 watrs all the time using PSK31 (about IM chat speed text data transfer.)
You could do better with directional antrenna.
-=fshalor
Hire Me!
I'll run your servers! I don't eat much and I won't take up much space...
Their global 'coverage' is limited as displayed on the map on their site. For one, Africa is completely uncovered.. so if youre smack dab in the middle of central Africa, theres NO way to communicate back except maybe long range ham radio.
The polar regions are also barely covered; that was the reason I was looking for a pager in the first place.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Interesting idea, but Amateur Radio is restricted to non-commercial use. "The Amateur Radio Service is a voluntary noncommercial communication service, used by qualified persons of any age who are interested in radio technique with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest" (FCC Website).
Brilliant solution, and an excellent example of the wide range and advanced nature of many Amateur technologies.
One problem....
He's running a business, and well that's not really amateur than is it? What you are proposing is actually illegal.
Please see part 97 of the FCC rules, specifically section 113, 'Prohibited transmissions'
FCC rules 97.113
-Mikey P
OK, I give...what exactly does one do when you are in the woods, and your server goes down?
If a sysadmin shits in the woods and nobody hears him does it make a sound?
-= I can't think of anything witty, creative, or insightful for my sig, so deal with this. =-
I'm glad I don't work for you. I dislike the idea of being thought of as incompetent and/or completely untrustworthy by default.
Did you ever consider that that might be/have been part of your problem - that only the people with those traits would deal with the flack?
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Let me get this straight:
1) You are the only sysop.
2) You've got 7 servers that must be up 24/7.
3) And you haven't even a single backupped spare with a watchdog to switch over when things go haywire?
Sorry, pal, but you're either bullshitting us or you gotta get some basics of your outfit sorted out before thinking of a satellite pager or other exotic stuff - that is not your current problem.
Having dealt with that, I recommend http://www.iridium.com/ for all your satellite communication needs. They are the satellite phone people. And they have a satellite SMS aswell.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Oh the irony, a spammer asking slashdot for help, and getting it before someone spots the obvious.
*tries to recover quickly.*
Hey, original poster, if you're out hiking in a stormy region and looking for a great satellite pager, you can't beat the reception on this model.