You think that, and I think that, but what we now have is two guys on the internet with ideas of how things should be done, versus one first-hand account of a real thing that actually happened.

Yup. Certainly not giving a "you shoulda done X" response. But I remain skeptical that it really needs to come down to "and I was the only one who knew how to work the radio."

> How did the phone break?

It could have as simply as not paying the bill because "why do we need this? we never use it".

Why would phone be independent of the fiber link in an isolated place?

GP was contracting sat-phone, from the article, to phone. The entire point of satellite phones is that they do not rely on cell towers.

thanks, misread that.