Peak tech? Wifi on Kilimanjaro

IT MIGHT not be the best place to check your work emails or scroll through twitter – but the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro now benefit from access to highspeed internet.

Tanzania has installed a broadband service to be used by climbers of Africa’s highest mountain.

State-owned tanzania telecommunications Corporation set up the network on tuesday at an altitude of 12,200 feet.

At the launch of the service, the country’s information minister Nape Nnauye said the move was historic. He added: ‘ Previously, it was a bit dangerous for visitors and porters who had to operate without internet.

‘All visitors will get connected... [up to] this point of the mountain,’ he said at Horombo, one of the camps en route to the peak.

And Mr Nnauye added that the summit of the 19,300ft mountain would have internet connectivity by the end of the year. Last year the tanzanian government announced plans to build a cable car on the southern side of Kilimanjaro, triggering uproar among climbers and expedition companies as well as environmentalists.

Kilimanjaro is an important source of tourism revenue in tanzania and neighbouring Kenya, with around 35,000 people attempting to reach its summit each year.

the mountain is part of a national park as well as being a Unesco world heritage site.

technology has increasingly infiltrated the world of mountaineering, with climbers on Everest enjoying easy access to wifi, power generators and smartphones that make it possible to share photos and make emergency calls in the event of an accident.

By contrast, when Edmund Hillary and tenzing Norgay reached the summit of the world’s highest mountain on May 29, 1953, the news did not reach the outside world until June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.