phone coverage to extend

A story now, for all the extreme ironing fraternity out there (or whatever the next daft extreme sport is… probably extreme sneezing by now), as news has come through of mobile phone coverage to extend into an area where you wouldn’t really expect it to appear.

Or, in other words, the top of Mount Everest.

According to Tech Shout, the antennas use a satellite uplink to route calls back down to sea-level network, but on the ground (well, on the mountain, which is admittedly stretching the definition of ‘on the ground’ a bit), it’ll act just like a normal phone network. Although I’m presuming it’ll be a bit more resistant to cold, since I’d imagine it can raaaaaaaaaaaather nippy up Everest…

The masts they’ve put up can be used by both GSM phones (so any British climbers with something like a Samsung Solid will be sorted) and CDMA phones (so our American brethren, lucky people that they are, would be able to take a Palm Pre up there if they so chose), although I dread to think what the roaming rates’d be to ring someone from up on the roof of the world.

And although I joke, surely anyone can see the benefit of having them up there. If you’ve fallen down a 93 foot deep crevasse, it’s going to at least be a bit of comfort to know your ate who was actually looking where he was going can ring for help. Since, you know, there’s plenty of flat ground on Mount Everest, it’s just that most of its vertical…

And hey, if you take the Sony Ericsson Idou with you, just imagine the awesome photos you’ll bring back.