Plan B Forum

Just finished reading "beautiful mystery" by Louise Penny. Almost all the action takes place in a monastery in Northern Quebec. No cell phone coverage.
No internet service. Yet the police blackberries still work to send and receive text messages. No internal clues that (I am ignorant of events in Canada) could tell me when the action is taking place. It was published in 2012.

How? What was their technology? Were they all connected to satellite?

snailgate

I had blackberrys for a number of years and liked them because of their full keyboard and size big enough to easily type on them. I always thought they used cellular technology (if I'm not mistaken they were phones as well), but there wasn't a lot of wireless internet then. Perhaps, even though there aren't cell connections strong enough for voice, data transmission can still take place? Alternatively, perhaps there are satellite blackberrys for this sort of use;I recall a guy I worked with who often traveled to Africa (studying tropical diseases) who had a satellite phone (I think the nettwork was called Iridium) and he said it worked well pretty much anywhere (and this was in the 90s).

I remember talk of Obama and his “crackberry” that be had to give up when elected.

I think I remember survivors happily discovering that their cell phones could still send and receive texts after the Banda Aceh tsunami wiped out all the cell towers. I don't know if they were Blackberries or not, or what technology was used. I had one about 20 years ago. One of my brothers in law was a long term holdout, keeping the same Blackberry for several years.

We will see them again soon I think.

Somebody had to I suppose.