Sat-Phone Totin’ Cowboys
Home on the range is going high-tech.
The Bureau of Land Management is distributing satellite phones to cowboys working in areas prone to wildfires. The cowboys, who are often out of cell range, are the first line of defense for communities vulnerable to sudden fires.
The BLM says Owyhee County [Idaho]…is the first place the agency has armed cowboys with satellite phones…For an initial agency investment of $10,000, the seven Iridium satellite phones seemed a reasonable bargain, said Janet Peterson, the BLM’s safety manager in Boise — especially considering that 1,000-square-mile complex alone cost more than $13 million to fight and will likely set taxpayers back $34 million more to restore the blackened landscape.
Iridium has nearly 230,000 commercial and government voice subscribers, along with a unit that supplies equipment for companies and the U.S. Department of Defense to track assets in remote areas where there’s no conventional cellular communication. Voice users include soldiers, the maritime industry, oil and gas companies, utilities, construction and mining — "Basically any industry where you’ve got workers out in the middle of nowhere," Iridium spokeswoman Liz DeCastro said.
