Mobile advances sound hope for aid agencies

Despite all the advances in networking which make it possible to manage PCs, laptops and other kit remotely, support staff invariably end up talking people through fixes over the phone.

But when the person on the other end of the phone could be in a feeding station in rural Chad, with its dry and dusty environment presenting its own challenges for operating technology, things can get complex pretty fast.

One of the first personnel it sent to Haiti after the earthquake was a senior voice and data engineer who brought a laptop-sized device called a B-GAN (Broadband Global Area Network). Connecting to orbiting satellites, it provides instant voice and data communications and also has GPS capabilities.

The early days of Concern’s response

In the early days of Concern’s response, mobile phones were out of action. Most of the masts around Port au Prince belonging to Denis O’Brien’s Digicel were damaged, although its core data centre was housed in an earthquake-proof building. The other mobile network in the country, Haitel, had larger masts on hill tops around the city which withstood the earthquake better, but the massive demand placed on the network meant it was practically unusable.

“After four or five days, each NGO had about 2MBits/sec of broadband,” says Richardson. Networking company Cisco donated voice over IP (VoIP) hardware such as headsets to help with the effort.