When should I tell the people that live there now when to expect you?

There are indeed satellite phones in Nepal, but they are extremely rare given the number of people that have them vs. the number that don't.

Also, if you think the cell network can get overloaded in a hurry, you should look at the bandwidth budgets for those type of satellites. In disaster areas, sat phones have the same issue of 'network unavailable' when the birds are trying to pass more calls when they have bandwidth for. All commercial systems are allotted frequencies in one particular band or another and when they're full, they're full. Amateurs have at least a dozen bands, all with different propagation profiles. Not to mention, we have our own both voice and digital satellites that are exclusively for amateur communications.

Finally, in a supplement from Inmarsat's own 2013 shareholder report... 'The capacity of our satellites is limited and our network can be subject to congestion due to concentrated usage in a specific geography. Continuing congestion could damage our reputation for service availability and harm our results of operations.'

[1] http://www.inmarsat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IGL-2013-Supplemental-Disclosure-20-May-2014.pdf

http://www.qrz.com - Show up at the address listed for me... they might tell you where I've deployed to if they say anything at all.

W1BMW

Packet is still alive and well, but everyone I know has switched to APRS (a protocol that sits on top of AX.25). HF packet is slow, but it's there. 300 Baud doesn't pass a lot of data. I'd rather rely on packet via satellite than packet over HF. The successful HF modes (AMTOR, SITOR, etc) have forward error correction to cut down on bad data... the packet network just has to repeat everything until it's understood.

W1BMW

Actually, the FCC is now proposing that amateurs share those LF spectrums that BPL uses as experiments BY HAMS have determined they can co-exist just fine. In fact, Hams are getting more frequencies now than they have ever lost. http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-seeks-to-assign-entire-amateur-portion-of-160-meter-band-to-primary-status-to-amateur-radio-serv is just one of several similar articles the ARRL has reported on recently. Please don't keep up the BS argument that we're losing our bands and privileges when the opposite is true. Aside from a portion of the 220MHz band that we might actually be getting back, where else have we lost spectrum and rights? There are more licensed hams than ever now and the reduced license restrictions offer more privileges for less work.

W1BMW

How is this insightful? It's someone moaning about the fact that they don't like a type of article. The only insight here is StinkyPad is a whiney little bitch.

They're not claiming it's a new idea, they're saying that such tubes are structurally sound for the purpose.

Certainly! But our* corporations have a pretty crappy record of balancing ethics and profits.

* Humankind's. No country or race has any claim to superior ethical behavior.

I don't think a resolution passed by an NGO or a couple of research groups are going to stop this. There's too much profit potential for successful edits. What would a parent pay to have a child that was free of a genetic defect? Blonde hair and blue eyes? Etc...