There may be no escape from the internet. If you can get Wi-Fi on Mount Everest, then you can probably get it anywhere on Earth. And yes, now you can get Wi-Fi in the mountains of Nepal, including on Everest.
But the story of how a company got the internet to Everest is just as interesting.
In this cold region of the world, communication can mean life. More than 1,600 climbers have had access while on Everest. And in the region, Everest Link has more than 200 Wi-Fi hot spots in more than 40 villages. It connects 34,000 locals and more than 40,000 tourist a year.Tsering G. Sherpa, CEO of Everest Link, said in blog post that his only means of communicating before the year 2000 in Nepal was the written letter, sometimes delivered by helicopter. That year, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. He had to fly her to the nearest city and then to India for treatment. His sister lived in Nepal, and they had to shut down their business to join their mother in India. They lost a year’s worth of business because of inadequate communication. And their mother passed away.
Sherpa took that as a call to action, and he started a network in Nepal with 128 kilobits per second of bandwidth. The goal was to connect remote villages that lacked communication. It was going well, but then the country went through political unrest.
“We had to abstain from providing service, going on hiatus for eight years due to threats from extremists,” Sherpa wrote.
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