What kind of wireless system can I use in the middle of the Sahara desert to phone and use internet?

Answer 1

Well there's plenty of options available depending on how fast of a connection you need and what kind of a budget you have to work with.

Inmarsat's BGAN system delivers up to 492kbps broadband internet with the ability to use the phone (64kbps ISDN quality!) at the same time. It's the size of a briefcase and works anywhere in the world except for the extreme polar regions. Oh, the price? well the units themselves start around $1500, the service is about $47/month, plus $10.80 per Mb of data transfer.
http://broadband.inmarsat.com
http://www.thepowerofbgan.com/documents/inm_bgan_brochure_a4.pdf

Need a smaller phone? Try Iridium. Their handheld phones work anywhere in the world. They now have data cables available that will let you hook your laptop up to them however the data rate is only 2400 baud.
http://www.iridium.com/

Thuraya also has handheld phones, even smaller than Iridium, however they only work in the northern 2/3 of Africa, almost all of Europe and the western half of Asia. You can also get a data cable for most of their phones, and this will allow you up to 64kbps download speeds (GPRS only??) or 9600 baud circuit switched data. Higher speeds available with briefcase style phones.
http://www.thuraya.com
http://www.outfittersatellite.com/adobe/thuraya_rates.pdf

Globalstar also has handheld phones and works worldwide, like Iridium. Their phones cost about $700 and up, but their monthly fee is about $37 (based on a $450 annual fee) for no minutes and goes up from there ... way up. Data rates are 9600 baud with a data cable used with the handset.
http://www.globalstarusa.com