From Milsat Magazine
By Dwight Hunsicker, Executive Vice President and General Manager, GLOBECOMM
The hurricane season of fall 2017 will be remembered for a long time. The major hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, roared through the southeastern United States and the Caribbean. Lives were in jeopardy as observers wondered how they could help.
Supply routes for much-needed water, food, medicine, clothing, fuel and other commodities were almost nonexistent, particularly in the Caribbean. How could these regions be helped when the outside world didn’t know what critical supplies were needed most?
Many companies and government agencies rushed to help. Reestablishment of communications to these areas became crucial to redefining the supply routes. One company, in particular, was one of first responders to make this happen — GLOBECOMM.
GLOBECOMM has been a leading supplier of disaster recovery products and services for decades. Recently, after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, GLOBECOMM partnered with Vanu to start the process of reestablishing communications across the island. This was accomplished with a small cellular base station made by Vanu covering about a three mile radius. The base station is plugged into a satellite dish installed by GLOBECOMM that connects back to a soft switch located at GLOBECOMM’s New York headquarters facility. The soft switch then connects to local carriers, providing much-needed cell service to the population. The response was phenomenal; cell phones started ringing like a flash mob concert. Continue>