Cell Phones at Burning Man

Filed Under Burning Man, Events, Geek, Twitter on 2009-08-25, 14:17

Burning Man Iphone

While thousands are counting down the days until they arrive in Black Rock Desert for Burning Man this year, there’s already a number of people out there on the playa getting things ready….. and they’re calling and tweeting back to us looking for someone to bring the things they forgot. Yes, that’s right there is cell service on the playa this year. How do I know? I got a call from Rubin while he was sitting at the space reserved for our camp (Ardent Heavy Industries). In addition several others are tweeting up a storm: @SFSlim, @steve23, @Rubin110, @TKimball, @JosephPred, and more. And of course foursquare had to get in on the action and quickly added Black Rock City to their database so people could check in. As of this writing, SFSlim is the Mayor of The Man but we predict this to change once Steve23 hears wind of it.

The cell service appears to be limited to AT&T and Verizon, but from what we hear people are getting 5 bars inside Black Rock City. Apparently the service is mostly coming from a temporary tower that was installed on some leased land near Frog Pond, which is less than a mile from the trash fence that marks the border of Black Rock City. How are they doing it? According to @ChrisPetrell it’s a combination of solar/wind powered tower with a satellite uplink. It’s not official Burning Man cell coverage and the Burning Man Org has nothing to do with it, but DPW and other volunteers already on the playa are using it. In addition to this temporary tower, there are also permanent AT&T and Verizon towers south of Empire that people are reporting service from. And finally, there is a theme camp that is providing a GSM->VOIP gateway. I’m assuming this rumored theme camp is the same as the OpenBTS project I posted about last year.

But before you get your hopes up, know that the chance of this service making it through Burning Man without melting down is slim to none. Joseph Pred notes:

Important cell phone update: Temp site only supports 23 Verizon/CDMA users and no SMS. AT&T/GSM supports 35 users with SMS but limited EDGE.

This means you’ll have quite the battle with 40-50,000 other attendees if you need to make a call home. Rubin mentioned that he was already having trouble and the event is not due to start for almost a week. I think it’s still appropriate to tell your boss/significant other/etc that you are not contactable while out on the playa. Besides, do you really want to get that call about the firewall going down while you’re in the middle of 2pir surrounded by an actual wall of fire?

What do you guys think about cell phones on the playa? Good, bad, who cares?

original Man image from Dan Garcia

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Comments

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  • Stephen Kosciesza

    There's also a watch. That's an easily-carried “time peace” (or, as I think I've seen it somewhere, “time piece”).
    It works on the Playa. I wore mine, even when I wore nothing else. (Well, until it broke.)

  • Stephen Kosciesza

    Good point about the old days. The main pressure I've had to break down and get a cell phone has been from people who can never be bothered to be on time or keep their commitments; they've actually told me I should get one so they can get in touch when they don't show up.
    I might get a cell phone some day, for some reason. That won't be the reason. Those people (who always know what everyone else should be doing) should try some other old-fashioned notions–following through on commitments, and just plain old good manners. That's good on the Play or off it.

  • Stephen Kosciesza

    Probably, when that pompous buffoon Al Sharpton got a lot of racists and a few thousand fools to descend on a small town, to have a violent racist hate crime declared a civil right–PROVIDED it's perpetrated by blacks on whites.

  • Stephen Kosciesza

    I've got it!

    Sure! Cell phone coverage on the Playa. Erect an 8 foot tower, and have coverage in a 10 foot diameter circle.

    Then, put it outside the front gate. And collect all those fees for reentering.

    Alternatively, put that 10 foot circle somewhere on the open playa within the BRC limits. Then it can be an art installation. We can all stand around and watch a few hundred people crowded in there, jockeying for space and signal and yelling at the others to hold it down so they can talk.

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  • Anonymous

    Me and my boyfriend are experienced burners, but since I haven’t been able to afford even the low income ticket he had to go alone. We’ve always spent every second of our lives together and not knowing if he’s safe is excruciating. It is hard not to cry knowing I have to go to sleep alone every night. Not only that, but he doesn’t know if I’m safe. I don’t live in the best neighborhood and we’ve recently had a lot of scary stuff happen, so this week is really painful. He called me right before he lost his signal (we don’t even own cellphones, he borrowed it) and it really hurt to have to hang up. Maybe some people just don’t have the same connection to that one person we have and I almost wish he hadn’t gone without me, but I didn’t want to keep him from it. I will definitely support having a method of communication over there. It is fine to be disconnected from those who don’t matter, but to want to disconnect from the one person that makes you whole is pretty sad. If I could speak to him with my mind I would, but since I don’t have psychic powers I will keep hoping that they will eventually come up with a reasonable method to communicate with that person. We should trust our fellow burners to be responsible with the use of cellphones just like we trust them to be responsible with giant flamethrowers. I have no trouble putting together a task force that will ‘artistically interpret’ someones attempt to either destroy or block someone’s cellphone by reading them vogon poetry incessantly. But really, stop hating because some people actually have people they love outside the playa. If someone makes a call in the privacy of their own tent, they have the right to do that, just as much as you have the right to display your pierced wrinkly junk. And what if the theme is ‘the future’ or ‘technology’ or even ‘communication’? Burning man is not about becoming an isolated country of naked cavemen. Considering everyone that lives around that area can hear explosions and smell the smoke a mile away, we definitely aren’t isolated anyway. Everyone goes to the playa to have their own unique experience, and if that means they need to know that they won’t be coming home to a dead wife, or their apartment burned down, then that’s their right. We’re still in America and if we can freely run naked, take drugs, get drunk, and burn so much material that we create our own localized global warming, then we definitely have the right to keep in touch with those we love.
    This is where the true movement begins.

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  • Stephen Kosciesza

    Want to declare here and now, I had nothing to do with this.

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