Mobile phones, love them or hate them they are one of the most iconic gadgets of the modern world, even so they are not without their problems. Call drop outs, poor sound quality, it must be time for an extreme solution. Would you climb Mount Everest to tweet, Kenton Cool did, now that’s an extreme solution. That’s right, now you have a solid reason to complain to your carrier about Drop-Outs and Dead-Zones. The Nepalese have managed to give the locals GOOD reception at 29,029 feet.
The first call from the cell tower in the clouds was made in October 2010 when the GSM 3G tower was first installed at the base camp on Everest, while this inaugural call was actually a video call made with the worlds most spectacular backdrop it was made from the base camp, not the summit of Mount Everest. Chinese mobile operator Ncell encountered extremely harsh conditions in constructing the tower, not really surprising when you consider that by 2009 216 people had perished attempting the ascent, this is a deadly environment. Powering the cell station is a bank of solar panels.
So what was the first ever tweet from the summit? Kenton Cool’s tweet read as follows “Everest summit no 9! 1st tweet from the top of the world thanks to a weak 3G signal & the awesome Samsung Galaxy S2 handset! @samsunguk”. Yes it’s all marketing, this is all part of the current marketing campaign for the Samsung Galaxy S II. Highpants suggest the follow-up ads show Mr Cool nearing the summit only to receive an unsolicited marketing call from India.
