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Unwired on Everest? Not Quite
09:00 a.m. EST Nov 30, 2003
Intel has been going crazy for the last half a year or so with advertising their new Centrino processor which has built in wireless capabilities. However, one of their ads has been getting a bit of flack in the UK – spurning over 90 complaints to the Independent Television Commission.
One of the Intel ads, which was definitely shot in a studio, shows a guy hunkered down in a snow storm on Everest. Besides sporting his down, the dude is also sporting an Intel Centrino powered laptop and is surfing the Internet at a high speed.
The article states, “Intel said it was possible to get a wireless Internet connection from Everest, adding that the company sent a team with computer notebooks with Centrino technology there to test it.”
Well, was there wireless Internet in Base Camp this past spring? We do know that there was an internet café there, and rumors abound of wireless internet, however, we didn’t receive any mention from any team about accessing the internet using wireless internet.
The internet café did use a wireless setup to get the satellite based high-speed internet connection from the actual dish that was located near Kala Patar, to the café in Base Camp. Even if there was a wireless connection available in Base Camp to the climbers and trekkers, it was not available up higher on the mountain, as the ad seems to depict. One must remember that the people doing this ad probably had as much an understanding of Everest as the Pope would a condom.
The commercial is currently under review and could even be banned if found to be misleading. Many of the Intel ads touting their Centrino with the built in wireless are in many ways misleading. They often depict normal people using the internet wirelessly in a wide variety of locations. What the ads often fail to show or explain is that in order to get a wireless internet connection you need to be in area that is serviced by a wireless signal – you can’t just buy the computer, sit down wherever you wish or Everest’s Camp II for that matter, and start doing email.
Interestingly enough, there was WiFi on Everest, used successfully from Camp II, 6400m, to send pictures down to the Internet, relayed via Base Camp. This didn’t happen in 2003, 2002, nor even 2001, but by ExplorersWeb’s own Mount Everest Internet Experiment in 1999. A webcam was placed on one of the climbers, and the signal was relayed via an 802.11b signal (WiFi) down the mountain. Sherpas, holding antenna arrays, helped pass the signal down. To imagine, that this was years before the widespread popularity that Wifi is getting these days.
Image of the Everest Internet Café from this past spring courtesy of BaseCampMD.com.
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