If this isn’t an indication of the expanding coverage areas for mobile devices, you can now place a call or send a text message from the peak of Mt. Everest.  Couple of interesting points in this story from the BBC- the message Rod Baber left on the Motorola-sponsored voice mail box included descriptions of the following:

1.  The view (what he was looking at)
2.  How cold it was (the temperature)
3.  What he would do back at base camp (what was next)

So, I guess we now have an answer to the question of what you talk about from the top of Mt. Everest.  Remarkably similar to what people do while getting on a plane or any other mundane activity and choose to be on the phone.

"Just getting on a plane here…pretty crowded flight with lots of kids.  Cold here but looks like rain is stopping.  Can wait to get to the lake this weekend."

Many years ago as a consultant, I worked with a few of the then red-hot mobile satellite communications companies that wanted to bring wireless service to the world via low earth orbit (LEO) satellites.  While doing the market study work, we identified this little trend call terrestrial network build-out and that it would rapidly fill the coverage void present at the time (1997-98).

Not to mention that
satellite phones were huge, expensive to buy, expensive to use, and
didn’t work inside (oops). Motorola rolled the dice with Iridium at that time and along with other backers dropped more than $5 billion into the project.  Who wouldn’t have wanted one of these "little" beauties?