Backcountry Internet Options

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/expedition-blogging-part-1-jordan.html

And

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/iridium-go-dixon.html

The sierra is a big place
Much without cell service

You will need satellite communications. Find a communications company that specializes in providing the services you need.

There are satellite hot spots, that cost around $800 (Iridium Go), which is probably what professionals would use, journalists, guides maybe?

I've been checking out the DeLorme inReach which I think can sync with your phone. It's an upgrade I'm not sure I'm willing to do, as I was close to getting the spot 3 just for checking in and emergencies. It's extra weight either way and more batteries to deal with.

Don't mind the haters. They're the ones who wouldn't, couldn't say no if their boss or girlfriend knew the could stay in touch. Spend the dough, it's for work right? No one will mind if you're holed up early trolling gear swap or watching Netflix from time to time.

I don't have any better advice on hardware than has already been delivered, but I did want to deplore the anti-internet reactions. Not every job is the same, not every employment contract is the same. Personally, I quite often take internet accessibility with me when I'm on 24/7 call. I very rarely get called, but when I do, I can log on to servers and fix things. If I stayed home every weekend I was on call, I would get substantially less time in the woods.

My gear wouldn't help in the Sierras though…in SW Indiana it's hard to get out of cell phone range, so I content myself with a MiFi.

Much of the Sierra High country is inaccessible with a smart phone. A friend of mine uses something called In Reach from Delorme to stay in touch with his wife. You may be able to use this, but I don't think it has quite as much capability as a smart phone.

The bigger problem is encouraging companies to expect us to take vacations and still work. If you have to work, it's not really a vacation.

"Personally, I quite often take internet accessibility with me when I'm on 24/7 call."

I'm on call myself once every six weeks with what I suspect are similar constraints and duties.

I need both a cell phone signal and connectivity with a laptop.

Serious question, are the backcountry devices fast enough/allow enough bandwidth to work on servers? (Say restart a service? Move files?)

Just curious…not sure I'd actually take it backpacking with the weight and concerns about electronics issues and for other reasons not appropriate for this thread. :)

It is intriguing, though, as being on call does constrain me at times. Though, I suspect Mrs Mags secretly likes it as I check things off the HONEY DO list in a more timely manner. ;)

EDIT: Realize you use this in Indiana on MiFi… Ah..a bit different than the Sierra (or the CO Rockies). I've done something similar in the past in an urban setting…

Some context here: There is a continuum of responses to OP's question, ranging from carrying a satellite phone, to hiking in an area with cell phone reception, to finding another job, to not carrying anything at all. Under varying circumstances, all are legitimate solutions.

My response, delivered "tongue in cheek", was meant to motivate OP to consider whether it is really necessary to carry a cell phone at all. BPL is a website devoted to both lightening one's load, and simplifying it, and much posting here is devoted to that subject across the full range of gear carried. Are cell phones somehow exempt from the discussion? I made my suggestion "tongue in cheek" to convey my bemusement at the prospect of having to maintain 24/7 contact with the employer while on vacation from what is very likely a high stress IT job( I'll get to the question of my naivety regarding IT below), and to suggest that perhaps OP's perception of the necessity might be worth reevaluating. There was nothing in my post that any reasonable person could construe as jackassery, dirt baggishness, or hateful speech. Was I suggesting that OP reconsider whether it is necessary to carry a cell phone? Absolutely! But it was that and nothing more. I consider that a legitimate suggestion to make in pursuit of "EnLIGHTenment". What really disturbs me is the truly hateful responses in return. To those of you who made those comments, I invite you to reflect on the tenor of your posts and in future try to keep it civil.
There is nothing to be gained by inflammatory posts that all too often end in a downward spiral into a flame war that sullies the participants and the Forum.

Regarding my naivety and simplemindedness about IT. The poster has no knowledge of my professional background and thereby commits that most basic of intellectual errors, "Contempt prior to examination". For the record, I worked 23 years as an IT professional in one of the more stressful areas of the profession. I am very well aware of the demands made by organizations on their IT professionals, particularly in real time critical situations. The pressure can be extreme, hence my suggestion that OP reconsider the necessity of bringing a cell phone on a vacation, not only to maximize his enjoyment of the vacation per se, but also for his long term health. To accuse me of naivety could justifiably be called simpleminded, but I am content to call it contempt prior to examination, and let it go at that.

And to power said satellite devices you'll want a battery pack and maybe a solar panel. I use a couple of 30,000ah cheapies I got off Dealextreme.com, and a Brunton 27 Watt foldable panel. It's fairy light and gives lots of power in full sun.

I brought an Iridium sat phone with me back in like 2010, because it was the first time I had been backpacking since I was a teenager and my wife thought I was going to get eaten by a bear or something lol. The coverage, for where I was, was horrible and not reliable to say the least. It may be better these days and in that area, but you wont know until you get there. IMO, Its better to try and get someone to cover for you, than for your employer to expect you to to be available and you're not. Speaking from a professional point of view anyway.

Whatever happened to HYOH?

To the OP, I don't have much to offer in terms of hardware advice either, except that you are looking at satellite connectivity and either very expensive or limited to text messaging. Full connectivity, if even possible, will be heavy — internet device, satellite device, batteries/solar, etc. Something like the DeLorme is pretty light and reliable for short text messages.

A suggestion if your itinerary has any wiggle-room is to loop your trip through civilization once or twice and use those days to connect and tend to work, then be off the grid the rest of the time. Even then connections and transmission speed could be spotty, check ahead of time depending where you are thinking of connecting.

Unless you happen to be in an area that has good enough cell service to cover data needs also, I wouldn't plan on being in contact. "Wired" uploads her blog posts every few days as she gets service (and did so on the PCT), which is normally on a summit, ridge or resupply point.

As a sole proprietor I do what I can stay in touch in case a client has a need while away, but I let them know up front there will be days at a time I'll be totally unavailable. I made mods to a program on the trip out west while stopped for dinner some place, but once I hit the trail too bad. Tried calling my wife once when I supposedly had full bars but only 1 of 5 attempts actually connected.

If you MUST be in contact for some reason, plan smaller loops instead of one single traverse. If it's just a "would be nice" kind of thing, I'd just tell them not to expect a response until you're out.

"Serious question, are the backcountry devices fast enough/allow enough bandwidth to work on servers? (Say restart a service? Move files?)

Just curious…not sure I'd actually take it backpacking with the weight and concerns about electronics issues and for other reasons not appropriate for this thread. :)"

Right now? It'd take some creative engineering.

I believe Iridum has a throughput right now of like… 10 kilobits per second under ideal situations.

Think of that as an extremely slow modem dialup speed.

Apparently Iridum Next should be online by 2017 if they stay on schedule, and if memory serves they'll support 1megabit transfer speeds. Which is actually fast enough to do stuff, even at the RDP level. I imagine it'll be hella expensive though.

As far as services and moving files… If you could console in via SSH or something like that there's no reason why you couldn't issue text based commands. The latency would be killer and might be a deal breaker, but I'd say it's entirely possible.

Edit: I may have been overly optimistic about the Go's throughput. As the BPL article explains, a 32kb photo took 5 minutes and a couple restarts to send.

IF I was going to try to use this with corporate email, I'd seriously consider setting up some rules on my mail account so that only the most important stuff goes to my inbox while I'm out. Otherwise I'd spend hours downloading the thousand emails or so that I get every day that are generally crap.

For the OP, I'd say this is your only back-country solution, and it's not going to fulfill your needs. It's insanely expensive, and if you're modifying a couple meg file, it's going to take like 3 hours to download and 3 hours to upload. My honest-to-god suggestion is to find a resupply or stopping point that will have some kind of internet you can tap into and scheduling a point on a day that you will be "live" and let your work know that this X hour period is when you have reliable connectivity. Any time you hit a summit or a point that overlooks the central valley or maybe the 395 feel free to pull out the phone and look for a signal. The Sierras are getting more and more saturated and I was surprised where I got signal. However, I wouldn't rely on that.

The tech isn't there, and the price point certainly isn't there right now.

I came here in hopes of finding some solutions to aid in getting me out there. Looks like I found the answer! I just need new jobs! Thanks guys! How silly of me. Perhaps I can ask my parents to set up a trust fund so that I may afford ultra light gear and provide for my family after I quit my jobs.

Personally, I run an small ISP. I am the ONLY employee. Well, my wife does the billing. That little business venture has me on call 24/7/365. I provide internet to rural areas, where people only had satellite options before. They were unable to go to school online, work from home remotely, or operate businesses without me. Oh well, Ill just quit.

I also am the IT director for a rural hospital. For that, I am on call 24/5 days a week and every other weekend. Ill just quit though. I'm sure they will do fine being unable to pull up EMR records, or make phone calls. We used to do it without all that right? Who needs to live to be 70 anyways.

It must be nice to be an easily replaced paper pusher. I do envy the lack of stress. Maybe one day things will change for me. Until then, why dont you go hiking instead of posting on an internet forum?

As an aside, I have tethered my old Globalstar satphone to a serial dongle and cleared a DNS cache and rebooted an AP, all on a speedy 14.4kbps (claimed). Took about 5 minutes for the RDP session to load, but it was better than a 3 hour drive back!

Personally I am looking at an Iridium GO! No first hand experience with one yet though.

I can tell you from experience that even something like webmail will be excruciatingly slow at sub-dial-up speeds. Iridium or Globalstar phones are not the category of device for any kind of internet-based tasking. And it's not just the volume of data going through a tiny pipe; there are the web applications, protocols, and security layers that don't play well with long delays and (relatively) high error rates.

You'd be better off looking at something like Inmarsat's BGAN:

http://www.bluecosmo.com/mobile-satellite-internet

but you'd be adding 3+ lbs. to your kit IAT whatever device you'd be using for work products (laptop, tablet) and you'd need an analog phone handset if you want to do voice — although Skype or some other VoIP application may work using the laptop, so maybe a wired or bluetooth headset would suffice.

"The tech isn't there, and the price point certainly isn't there right now."

THat's what I figured…then I saw that the one user who did work while backpacking was actually tethered via a smart phone. Not ideal but workable.

The true backcountry technology does not seem quite there yet. A VPN connection coupled with RDP sounds like a disaster with the current technology base for backcountry use (as one example).

The 1 megabit solution would be a workable solution..but insanely $$$ when it comes out (as you said).

To the OP, I understand your frustration with the responses, but no need to call people *not* on call 24/7 paper pushers. :)

That we are becoming a 24/7 society, increasingly demanding everyone be connected, is another topic all together…but we'll that one for the minefield that is chaff…

I'm not the OP, but I do think that calling people "paper pushers" is one of the less offensive items in this thread.

I personally could manage with around 100-200kbps. I could do just about anything work related with that, be in POP in some emails, SSH, etc. The latency sucks, but its not like I am word processing over RDP.

I thought that Globalstar's GSP-1700 was going to have a 144kbps modem. Anyone have any experience with that? Although, I doubt I could tether that to my smart phone, so that would be an extra heavy solution. Iridium GO! still seems like the best option.

"… checking corporate email (Microsoft Exchange) and potentially editing a file and sendwith (all synced with dropbox).

believe I can do everything with my smartphone. What would be best option for reliable connection with ability to send a couple MBs? Work will pay within reason, so focused on weeight and reliability. "

This probably doesn't really help, but I've found I get AT&T 4G in all kinds of places one wouldn't expect. Like maybe 70% of Yosemite, and 25% in most places I've camped in the Sierra Nevada (can't make a call from my house, but 50 miles from any buildings, I could stream Netflix if I wanted to).

Wife has Verizon and get's nothing outside of places like the valley floor of Yosemite.

If I had such a situation as yours. I'd study coverage maps and plan a route that would put through solid 3G or better zones periodically.

Daniel,
I'm glad you finally got some meaningful responses instead of a lot of BS.
Nimblewill Nomad, who has hiked more miles than any of us ever will, recounts in his books how he often has an email device with him on thru-hikes. It is essential in numerous ways for planning, scheduling, etc.

This kind of stuff is why I seldom engage with BPL anymore. It is beyond childish. I'll keep my membership just to post to a small group of MYOGers who may be interested in major projects, assuming they haven't also gotten turned off and gone to another site.

"'m planning an 8 day trip in the Sierra this August. To appease my work, I'd like to have the ability to access the Internet primarily for checking corporate email (Microsoft Exchange) and potentially editing a file and sendwith (all synced with dropbox).

I believe I can do everything with my smartphone. What would be best option for reliable connection with ability to send a couple MBs? Work will pay within reason, so focused on weeight and reliability. "

This isn't what you asked for but it's a possible solution to accomplish the same goal.

Outlook can, or at least did, work with SMS so an Inreach should work for that. Probably be best if someone, or a rule, forwarded only the messages that you needed to address. And not "Hey! Bagels in the breakroom!"

What type of file needs to be edited? Would it be possible for someone to do remote hands work for you? Instead of editing and sending a large file, could you keep a copy on your phone, update it to keep it current, and send a text to a co-worker/friend to update the file with just what needs to be changed?

A LONG time ago (my pager didn't have a display, just beeped) I was the only one doing Unix SA work supporting a team of developers. I went on a 2 week motorcycle tour for our honeymoon. I took along a device to send phone tones so I could access voicemail once a day even if it was a rotary phone. I left the root passwords with a trusted coder. I checked VM once a day and a couple of times talked him through a problem. It wasn't my hands that were needed, it was my knowledge. Maybe that can work for you but using texts instead of voice? BTW, they didn't require me to do it. I really loved that job and was happy to do it. Any job since then? No way. But everyone's circumstances are different.

Were you a phone phreaker back in the day, Randy?

Daniel wrote:

I’d like to have the ability to access the Internet primarily for checking corporate email (Microsoft Exchange) and potentially editing a file and sendwith (all synced with dropbox).

You might be interested in these BPL stories:
Two-way Satellite Communications for Backpacking: Part 1 – Introduction
Two-way Satellite Communications for Backpacking: Part 2 – Satellite Phones
Specific device information in those articles is slowly going out of date, but the basic satellite system information is almost unchanged – Globalstar has more satellites up now, so fewer coverage gaps.

The major problem is network speed, regardless of device:

Iridium: 2.4 Kpbs
Inmarsat: 2.4 Kbps on small devices
Globalstar: 9.6 Kbps
Terrestar: 160 Kbps down, 30 Kbps up, with major caveats (see articles)

You can get portable WiFi hotspots for most of those systems. However, syncing Exchange mailboxes and Dropbox at such low speeds is virtually impossible.

As Frank T mentioned, you’ll probably need a portable BGAN terminal with built-in WiFi hotspot, briefly mentioned in Part 1 above. Those have speeds “up to” 492 Kbps and weigh 1 – 2 Kg. You can rent these. Note that satellite megabytes are not cheap.

If Internet access in the backcountry enables you to get out there, go for it!

— Rex

I think the phone phreaking peaked a little before my time Stuart. The rotary phones I did use were mostly in the middle of nowhere on that trip. I wonder if I still have the tone sender? Probably in the box of 10 MB hard drives I'm keeping "just in case".

Outlook can, or at least did, work with SMS so an Inreach should work for that. Probably be best if someone, or a rule, forwarded only the messages that you needed to address. And not "Hey! Bagels in the breakroom!"

I could be wrong, but after trying to do this for myself, there seems to be hoops to jump through I can't quite figure out. It appears Delorme has structured their system in a way to try and protect its customers from racking up unwanted message charges through spam or Out-Of-Office replies.

Other than the inReach-to-inReach direct contact address (for two groups to communicate in the field both using inReach devices), there isn't a static contact address people can use to email or SMS an inReach user. They either use the website link to send a message (after you message them) or they can reply to SMS sent to them.

Maybe there is some work around, where somebody could send a message to a phone number that's synced with MS Exchange (Outlook) and create rules to reply to that when a targeted message comes in. Yet, considering how older non-smart phones have been reported as not capable of replying to an inReach SMS, I wouldn't want to rely on that for anything critical with work.