Market trend - Disaster Recovery

To manage the aftermath of a natural disaster, the essential ingredients are pre-planning, organization, trained people and communications. It is clear, today, satellite communication provides the preferred way to restore and temporarily reconnect stricken areas.

However, the satellite communications requirements can vary enormously. Different organizations: humanitarian, military, corporate, governmental and non-governmental, are extremely active in disaster recovery activities. These different entities can be involved at different stages and different scales of the activity and thus require communication solutions to suit. One requirement that never changes: to ensure coordination amongst the many stakeholders at regional, national or even international level, clear communication transmission is mandatory.

Satellites are also used widely used for preventing disasters, by surveying seismic activity and real time meteorology. Proven as a cost effective way to deliver timely information, decision makers are able to assess situations on the ground based on images, videos and telemetry provided via satellite.

Somewhat unluckily, it is the developing countries that seem to bear the brunt of most of the recent tsunamis, earthquakes and floods. These countries have to absorb the damage: infrastructural, human and financial. International relief funds often help to face the cost of rebuilding so, at least, the financial impact is softened. As an example, US$9 billion was pledged by private and public funds to aid the victims of 2005's Indian Ocean tsunami.

In every case, telecommunication infrastructure becomes seriously disrupted during a severe geological event. The satellite industry has, on the whole, responded to the increasing frequency of natural disasters by developing transportable, robust, flexible and easy-to-use solutions. Dedicated networks that are quick to deploy and can support single user links, distributed networking or even high-speed trunk communications have recently become available and SpeedCast is amongst the leaders in these developments.

SpeedCast provides FlyCast™; developed in-house in response to disaster recovery planners. FlyCast™ is based on satellite broadband technology, using portable antennas, secured transmission that supports voice, video, data and Internet applications. Our result is beautifully simple: users plug in their computer to the satellite receiver and communicate the same way they would if they were in their office. Rather like the office network, it is also possible to extend the solution to a community or refugee camp by adding wireless infrastructure. In order to extend the link to support a telecommunications backbone, we substitute the portable antenna with a fixed antenna and the solution principle remains the same.

On a final note, it is important to understand disaster recovery is more than what appears in international media over the first two weeks! The process of reaction and recovery are long, and we alluded to a variety of communications requirements at different stages.

In the first few hours, mobility is the top priority. Rescue teams need to be able to communicate quickly wherever they are. At this stage, satellite phones despite their per minute charges, are commonly used as they offer an immediate and perfectly mobile service.

After the first few hours state of emergency, communications capacity becomes in demand to support quantity of data to transfer to assess the damage extent and coordinate the deployment of the relief. This is the driver for phase 2 and a transportable (backpack or vehicle mounted) solution is needed to enable workers to organize relief centres and a base location. In a third phase, price will become a key element as recovery may last for several months. In this phase, mobility is no longer a factor and fixed antennas are typically deployed. For phase 2 and 3, VSAT solutions offer a good balance between price, quality and mobility. SpeedCast operates over 80 VSATs (ku-band and C-band) in the Aceh province in Indonesia since the 2005 Tsunami.