Satellite Cafe Reaches New Heights

From the SkyREPORT:

Satellite has taken its reach to 16,000 feet, supporting climbers on this spring's climb of the world's highest peak.

The first-ever Internet cafe at the Mt. Everest base camp went live last week using space segment on Americom Asia-Pacific's AAP-1 satellite. Americom Asia-Pacific, a 50/50 joint venture between Lockheed Martin and SES Americom, donated bandwidth on the satellite to help make the cafe possible.

The path consists of a Wi-Fi connection between the base camp and a satellite earth station installed within two miles of the camp at a height of 16,000 feet. The AAP-1 satellite then connects the earth station to a teleport in Taipei, which in turn, is connected to the Internet backbone via fiber.