Satellite phone?
$5 per minute.
Cost to Doug’s work place?
When we first moved off the grid we didn’t realize how far off the grid it would take us. Produce our own power? Check!
Siphon and filter our own water? Check!
Keeping contact with the company Doug works for?
At the time there was no good internet phone service so we had no choice but to use satellite phone (we have no cell tower in the area). Even the satellite phone had lots of lag but it worked much better than the internet phone.
When we first attempted to get a phone we tried to find a line of sight for a radio phone from the roof of our house though the channel of the river to the closest town.
You would be surprised to find
that Doug doesn’t particularly like heights, eh?
The river has a curve between there and the nearest town where land lines exist so, no line of sight.
The second thing we tried was to put a transmitter up a very tall tree, the tallest on our property. We hoped to get a line of sight over the trees growing on the curve in the river. Doug pounded staples made of rebar into the trunk making a ladder for climbing up and down (relatively) easy and safe.
Doug put staple steps 160’ - 180’ up the side of the tree
(the tree top is about 60' higher)
Still no connection. The trees on the curve between us and town were too high. We also learned that wet evergreens disrupt radio signals (even low bandwidth) as if the needles were sponges.
Finally we hired a guy to go up the mountain and climb the highest tree he could find, just to see if there was any chance at all with a relay station…
Nope! We had spent 5 years trying to get radio phone but were still stuck with satellite phone, texting, and email.
Coming: part 2 of this story where we try to take advantage of the Universal Service Fund which before deregulation ensured that everyone would get phone service and which now is only a front to supplement the cost of service to the to those living in remote areas and the poor...
