You Can Now Use 5G On Mount Everest To Call For Help If You're Stuck

Dhir Acharya - Apr 23, 2020

Chinese companies China Mobile and Huawei are working together to set up 5G base stations on Mount Everest, probably complete by April 25.

Remember those movies about mountain climbers that want to conquer Mount Everest but end up dying there, being unable to call for help? Those days will be far gone thanks to this new project. Chinese companies China Mobile and Huawei are working together to set up 5G base stations on Mount Everest. Once the project is complete, it will become the world’s highest place to have 5G network connectivity.

5G services have been enabled at two Everest camp with complete equipment installation. China Mobile expects the pending work of deploying 5G base station at the 6,500-meter-high forward camp to be complete by April 25, the company said. It will provide the summit of Mount Everest with 5G coverage.

Chinese companies China Mobile and Huawei are working together to set up 5G base stations on Mount Everest

In a post on Chinese social platform Weibo, China Mobile said that it finished setting up 3 5G base stations at two camps on Mount Everest on April 19. One of them is at 5,300-meter altitude while the other is at 5,800-meter altitude.

To be able to bring 5G to such heights, the company sent 150 workers to construct and do maintenance work at the base stations. China Mobile also had to have 8 tons of life support and network construction equipment to the world’s tallest mountain. The network construction equipment is supplied by Huawei. The project also required 25 km of optical fiber cable.

Chinese newspaper Global Times reported that the 5G base stations on Mount Everest will offer 1Gbps download speed. It specifically said:

“In addition to China Mobile, China Telecom has announced that it built 5G base stations at the Qomolangma base camp, at an altitude of 5,145.3 meters on April 13. The tested upload and download speeds were 700Mbps (megabits per second) and 223Mbps, respectively. China Unicom has also announced in recent days that it has built two 5G base stations on Mount Qomolangma.”

With the presence of 5G connectivity on Mount Everest, those taking the challenge to conquer the tallest mountain in the world will have a safer expedition.