Climbers at the top of Mount Everest will now be able to make video calls and surf the internet on their mobile phones, a Nepalese telecom group claims.
Ncell says it has set up a high-speed third-generation phone base station at an altitude of 5,200 metres (17,000ft) near Gorakshep village in the Everest region.
Climbers who reached Everest's peak previously depended on expensive and erratic satellite phone coverage and a voice-only network set up by China Mobile in 2007 on the Chinese side of the mountain.
The new installation by Ncell - a subsidiary of Swedish phone giant TeliaSonera - will also help tens of thousands of tourists and trekkers who visit the Everest region every year.
'Today we made the (world's) highest video call from Mount Everest base camp successfully,' Ncell Nepal chief Pasi Koistinen told reporters in Kathmandu yesterday.
'The coverage of the network will reach up to the peak of the Everest,' he added.
Mountaineers hailed the launch as ambitious and helpful.
'This will also be helpful, possibly, when there is an accident or an expedition mishap,' said Ang Tshering Sherpa, a member of the International Mountain Protection Commission.
A total of eight base stations, four of which will run on solar power, have been installed in the Everest region with the lowest at 2,870 metres (9,400ft) at Lukla, where the airport for the area is situated.
Company engineers braved low temperatures and winds to set up the infrastructure.
Despite the installation in Everest, telecom services cover less than one-third of the 28m people of Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world.
Around 3,000 people have climbed to the Everest summit since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to conquer the peak in 1953.
