Folks,

Need some suggestions based on your practical experiences. DD2 will be spending several months this summer in the Alaskan bush country around Prince William Sound. She’ll be counting fish for the Alaskan Dept. of Fish and Game. They provide a cabin, a generator and a sat phone for work and emergency related communications. While she could use the sat phone for personal use she has to pay the bill.

Being a member of digital generation she’d love to be able to communicate via e-mail with her friends (might even send one to her parents once in a while). Not having used sat phones I don’t know their ability to act as modems and how that might work with a dial-up ISP. Don’t know what model of sat phone ADFG uses, but I think she could find out for me. I can handle the computer side of things, she already has a small Asus laptop to use.

As a ham operator I could probably do it using digital HF but she has neither the time nor the money to take that option.

So, looking for suggestions on helping her manage her digital isolation. There will be a co-worker there as well but basically they spend 10 weeks walking the alluvial plains around the sound with only the occasional bear and fly fisherman to talk to.

Thanks!
Andy

Her lat may be too far north, but setting up a sat line internet service is pretty common these days. We did quite a few of those in Iraq, and it was surprisingly not that expensive. Then for a fixed fee you can have something like Skype service (or simply use an IM service and video teleconferencing capabilities) to stay in touch.

Using a sat phone could get expensive quick, even if there was a good data port capability with the unit. 3G is not likely to be available, and bandwidth would be limited.

I thought that Alaska was going to pipeline the Alcan Ferry route with cell service already. If so, maybe she can just use a cell phone that has email service, like my blackberry.

Sat "terminals" are what you're looking for - a portable earth station, such as the Thrane 500, a small and capable device. You need to get a sense of her lattitude, as this will affect both the equipment selection and the service selection.

At this place:
http://www.satellitephonestore.com/inmar...dem-rentals.php

They rent the system for $350 a month, it works within the BGAN coverage area:
http://www.groundcontrol.com/bgan_coverage_map.htm

Bandwidth charges are on top of the rental fees, and are steep (don't send a lot of pictures!)

25MB - $166.25 (that's about 20 digital photos from a 3 MP camera or a WHOLE LOT of plain text emails)
50MB - $325
100MB - $605
250MB- $11487.50
500 MB - $2875
1GB - $5,500.00. This is about the same as 1/2 hour of good quality video, a few hundred high-resolution photos, or 1/7th of the text of Wikipedia. (yes, that's five thousand five hundred dollars for a gigabyte of data use, makes you appreciate your DSL or cable modem, huh?)

You can hook pretty much anything to these terminals, they are, as far as the computer concerned, just another network connection or a modem. Battery life is dismal, you'll need a major solar array or other power generation system to recharge them.

Alternatively, you can rent a Satphone and use SMS, which is cheaper, but limited to 140 characters.

Guys,

Thanks for the info. Don't think she'll go for the $150/week for portable internet sat connection cost on a $15/hr job. But maybe a rental sat phone with free incoming msgs and phone calls for $20 a week.

She'll be above 60 degrees north. She does get cell service the SE Alaska town where she lives. But it takes a couple of days to get to these wiers by boat and foot, they really are in the boonies.

Job doesn't start until May so got some time to work on solutions.

Andy, I'll be heading to AK at the end of the month, also fairly remote. I'll ask around, and if there's any bright ideas from the locals I'll let you know.

I believe the hospital I'll be at has internet, since I've been communicating that way. If she's near a town, she may just have to satisfy herself with an occasional email!

Here is quite a good site on the Iridium 9500 data kit.

http://www.highspeedsat.com/iridium-9500-motorola-data-kit.htm

Internet access is about 1/5 the speed of Dial-up so is very slow. So if using this SAT IP connection for Internet access web browsing it would be best to use WAP protocol web sites stored as bookmarks on the computers browser. (last thing you want to be doing is paying to download someones advertising)

Plain text email would be workable and even small highly compressed photos can be sent/recieved such as you would have for picture SMS. Iridium SMS messages would also be an easy to use and convenient alternative.

http://messaging.iridium.com/

Many of my rural customers have/do use HughesNet. Don't know if it will work where DD will be.

On an outside chance, you may want to give these people a call.

http://www.acsalaska.com/personal/mobile-internet/coverage-maps.asp


"They provide a cabin, a generator and a sat phone for work and emergency related communications. While she could use the sat phone for personal use she has to pay the bill."

- this kinda tells me about where she may be. I would send her with a PLB also.

Thanks folks, I'm following up on all your suggestions. That modem add on for the Motorola 9500 looks the most promising so far. Thanks AFLM (if I may call you that).

Danny, her location is in the no-coverage area on that map. She can do voice and text from her town location via Verizon, but the work site will definitely be in the boonies. She does have a PLB that I gave her when she moved up there 3 years ago.

Will let the group know if we do work out a way of doing this.

Gee, that's about the nicest thing I've ever heard said about them...seriously!