Is cellular technology all that it is cracked up to be? Could it be time to look at satellite alternatives in light of the current tragedy in the southern region of the United States? My heart says yes while my brain says: “How?” There is little question that cellular technology is capable of some pretty incredible stuff nowadays. Listen to music, send e-mail or even watch TV! But with all of this truly amazing stuff out there, both the phones and the networks that support them still have some major disadvantages over their satellite cousins.

I live in a town known as Bellingham. We are hardly a thriving metropolis, but we are not super tiny either. Said to be one of the portals into the US from Canada (next to some smaller towns of course), Bellingham has decent cellular coverage. For that matter, the county itself can pretty much give you a good cell signal without too much fuss. But is the cell tower infrastructure as good as we once expected it to be. Dead signal spots in the home, problems with outages during major storms, the list of problems is not long, yet it remains problematic. Is satellite really the answer though?

I think that it could be, but that is coming from someone who knows little about Satellite phone networks. And speaking as a layman, I do know that the prices are beginning to come down some - on the hardware. Pricing on the coverage plans are still very high and quite frankly, beyond anything that I am willing to spend at this point. The pricing plans start at $50 per month, but that does not give you any substantial talk time unfortunately. Per minute costs are reflective to what the cell networks had us paying when mobile phones were first coming out.

So what are we to do? Continue using cellular technology along with that fun catch phrase; “Can ya hear me now?” Or do we instead, look to new developing technologies that might someday bridge the gap between the weaknesses and strengths of existing mobile technology. At this point, it would appear that we are stuck with two options: Traditional cellular or the more expensive satellite alternative. Maybe someday better technology will be made available to the masses. I mean, come on. We can watch freakin’ TV on our phones yet we spend the better part of our day trying to get out of a dead zone in our own homes? Give me a break!