I wonder what the roaming charges were for British mountaineer Bob Baber when he called his wife from the top of Mount Everest and set a new world record.
I agree with Neville that it was a very impressive piece of marketing by sponsors Motorola.
Bob had little time to phone home as 15 minutes is the maximum time usually spent at the summit. Making the call was was very risky because talking into the handset meant he had to remove his oxygen mask. Batteries for the Motorola handset were taped to his body to ensure they stayed at a high enough temperature to power the phone.
Actually, Bob left a voicemail message for his family and the headline is a little bit of journalistic licence.
It’s bizarre that Bob can get a signal on the highest mountain in the world while I always miss calls in my local supermarket because of the poor reception.
I’m just surprised he got the network coverage!
Amazing he could get a signal when i struggle to get one at home
Just imagine if Bob didn’t get a signal, if it had failed for Motorola, how much would it have cost them?
In point of fact, the transmission of phone signals is “line of sight”. So you often get quite good signals from remote mountain tops when you can’t in the valleys. I’ve noticed it a lot in Wales and the Lake District.
The fact you can get a signal even when you can’t “see” the mast is due to the signal bouncing around off buildings and hillsides like an echo.
I would imagine that Motorola would have done everything possible to ensure a strong cellular signal for this promotion.
Maybe even moved a satellite here or there – the phone has mobile broadband connectivity as well as cellular and the BBC story doesn’t say whether the phone call was via a cell netork or via the net…
Amazing indeed – I could never get a signal in the Brecon Beacons!
This certainly is impressive. I hadn’t seen this bit of news.
Like everyone else I am muttering but I can’t get any signal xxxxx (substitute your frustrating place).
sorry to join the conversation late, but have only just arrived back in Nepal from Tibet/China. As David points out in his post i’ve been heavily involved with this project and have been on Everest whilst Rod made his attempt (more details on the blog). As you point out, what made this a great challenge was the fact that there was so much that could have gone wrong. I was sat at base camp on day one and couldn’t get a singal at all and at that point was begining to resign myself to failure. Neville – i can confirm that a traditional GSM network was used utilising land based masts that china telecom had installed last year – so there was no satellite involved or any extra effort by Motorola to improve the signal.
It has been what i’d call a fingers crossed project. Bit of a leap of faith, and yes could have gone horribly wrong (hell of a contigency plan), but in the end well worth the risk.
Hi Justin, great to hear from you on what was truly a very innovative and creative mission. I’ve just realised the mountaineer’s name is Rod and not Bob. Apologies to Rod for that, but the links should still be ok.
Just imagine how mad he would have been if he didn’t get a signal!