Princeton, N.J.-based Americom Asia-Pacific is using satellite technology to launch what company officials describe as Mt. Everest’s first Internet café.
The Internet café operated at Mt. Everest’s base camp went live last week by using capacity on the company’s AAP-1 satellite. Americom Asia-Pacific, a 50/50 joint venture between Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] and SES Americom [Luxembourg: SESG], donated bandwidth on the satellite to help make the cafe possible.
Tsering Gyalzen, a native Sherpa and grandson of one of the Sherpas who participated in the first conquest of Mt. Everest in 1953, pitched the idea of setting up an Internet café at the mountain’s base camp. The path between the cafe and the outside world consists of a WiFi connection between the camp located on a glacier and a satellite earth station installed two miles away at a height of 16,000 feet.
The AAP-1 satellite connects the earth station to a teleport in Taipei, which then links to the Internet backbone via fiber. Aside from Americom Asia-Pacific, other supporters of the endeavor are the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, Cisco Systems [Nasdaq: CSCO], Teleport Access Services and WorldLink Communications of Nepal. Deepak Mathur, managing director of Americom Asia-Pacific, said that the project offers a way to showcase the unique benefits and capabilities of satellite communications technology. –Paul Dykewicz
