Disaster Recovery For Haiti's Cell Phone Networks

spun writes "A disaster recovery team from Trilogy International Partners, LLC was among the first responders to arrive after the quake in Haiti. After seeing to the safety of their staff, they worked quickly to bring up emergency generators and restore service to the devastated country. Winners of a State Department medal for their previous work in Haiti, the company appears to be a model not only for proper disaster recovery response, but also for ethical corporate behavior. Their quick action has no doubt saved thousands of lives, but Haiti still needs our help." Keith Calder, who used to work on Slashdot ad stuff before we had big corporate owners, is now a film producer of last summer's Battle for Terra. They are giving away signed copies of the DVD to the first 100 people who make $25+ red cross donations. It would be cool to see generous Slashdot Sci-Fi fans make a difference. If you are curious or voyeuristic about the devastation, Google Maps has satellite photos.

Comments

Digicel still working

[Anonymous Coward]

"Caribbean mobile operator Digicel Group Ltd. said Wednesday that its network in Haiti is still providing domestic and international phone service after a major earthquake devastated the country."
Digicel have also gotten their network in Haiti back working again. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100113-709435.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

Re:Digicel still working

[grcumb]

Digicel has also donated $5,000,000 in cash to Haiti. To put that in perspective, Chase Manhattan donated $1,000,000, less than a single one of their executives made in bonuses this year.

I organised a bit of emergency aid delivery with some folks from Digicel Pacific in the days following the Samoan tsunami that left thousands of people homeless. Not only are they very good at logistics, they also actually care about the people they serve. With their assistance, we were able to deliver solar/wind-up radios to affected families quickly and efficiently. Digicel shipped them for free and even paid for a bunch of them themselves.

This is due in no small part to the fact that Digicel is privately owned by Denis O'Brien. For all his faults (and he has a few), he genuinely cares about things like this and he insists that his people do too. I suspect that publicly owned corps just don't have the freedom to actually express humanitarian interest the way a private corp would.

Digicel are more or less the McDonald's of cell phone carriers in numerous developing nations in the Caribbean and the Pacific: They offer cheap, reliable service with few frills. Their Internet service (where I live, at least) is expensive but available, which is more than can be said about the situation before they arrived on the scene. It's no accident, therefore, that during rioting some years ago in Haiti, people actively defended the towers and buildings owned by Digicel. They were too valuable to burn.

For my part, I take significant comfort from the knowledge that they recovered from utter disaster so quickly. My country receives on average 1.5 hurricanes every year, and sits squarely on the Pacific ring of fire. We've had two 7+ earthquakes already in the last year and we've got a warning level two volcano boiling away in the north. Happily, we're not so crowded and impoverished as Haiti, so our buildings have (so far) staid intact.

Re:Many Avenues to Help

[jgtg32a]

Aircraft Carriers are very nice in these kind of situations, a clear airfield and IIRC those things can produce a lot of fresh water.

Re:Cellphone yet?

[stoolpigeon]

mobile is almost everywhere and will effectively be everywhere soon. it's actually a key ingredient to solving some of the challenges present in the developing world. FOSS is a big part too - such as the Ushahidi folks who are helping out in numerous ways with the situation in Haiti - from their base of operations in Nairobi.

Cellphones ONLY

[spun]

Haiti has nearly no land lines. Cell phone networks are cheaper to deploy than land lines. If you had bothered to read the summary, you would have read that this company was down there before the earthquake, and had won a medal from the State Department for their work building communications infrastructure in Haiti.

Industrial Strength MagicJack?

[assemblyronin]

What about an air-droppable military grade (i.e., MIL-STD) device with a generator/battery/solar power source that sets up a cellular phone hot spot, and can link with the national carrier?

There are plenty of technical hurdles to overcome, but if they're recoverable and 'inexpesive' enough to deploy on a one-to-two week bases. It would allow for rapid dissemination of communication signals across a disaster area while the more permanent infrastructure is brought back online.

Re:Cellphone yet?

[compro01]

Covering a large but sparsely built up area perfectly is a lot easier than covering a small, but heavily built up area perfectly. Big buildings of radio-unfriendly materials like steel and concrete make a mess of things, requiring many more cells in unusual configurations, whereas coverage in open air is completely consistent and you can just throw down towers in a simple grid.

Re:Many Avenues to Help

[spun]

I just want as much help there as fast as it can get there so try and show us up.

Sure, as do I. But it is important to note that there are other avenues of diplomacy than guns. If you want to get as much help there (and to the next place) as fast as possible, support a political party that actually funds the USAID. It will do more for our national security than any amount of purely military funding.

Re:Many Avenues to Help

[LWATCDR]

Maybe so but one of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Carl_Vinson_(CVN-70) can make 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has a hospital, and a bunch of helicopters. It can also provide communications and ATC services.
Of course this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Comfort_(T-AH-20)#2010_Haitian_Earthquake will also be a big help as will.
Actually what they need is money. If everybody in the US just gave $5 it would be a huge amount of money. Just be sure you give to a real charity. The SCUM of the earth are already setting up fake donation websites.
If in doubt the Red Cross, Doctors without Boarders, and Catholic Charities all have a good track record and I believe are all already "in country".

Re:Many Avenues to Help

[Hurricane78]

Man, these are the moments, where I am proud to be human. There may be much evil going on. But sometimes we just seem to switch to another mode. Where we work together and act for the good of us all.

Maybe we humans just have too comfortable lives. Cavemen were small groups who had to work in that mode, to survive.
Like the Hadza for example.
I’m of course not saying that I want more catastrophes. Just more of that outside-normal-rules teamwork.
We would already be much further in evolution...

Not so fast down the memory hole...

[copponex]

The reason Haiti is in the shithole is because it's been occupied and abused by foreign powers. We've been involved since the end of the 19th Century, when legendary Marine Smedley Butler, in his own words, "was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism... I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in."

Haiti was occupied by the United States from 1915-1934. Since then, marines have been sent to Haiti numerous times. The CIA played both sides of Duvalier while his paramilitary force, the Tonton Macoute, assassinated dissidents and anyone who dared oppose Papa Doc. In a final embarrassment to the Haitian people and to the very idea of democracy itself, the Bush Administration sent the Marines to help finalize the coup in 2004 by kidnapping Aristide and sending him to Africa, once again throwing the nation into chaos.

It's good that the US Government is assisting the Haitian people during the disaster, and I never discount the generosity of the American public. Just don't be surprised if they don't treat us like friends.

A new book on the subject, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment by Peter Hallward, scrupulously documents the events leading up to February 29, 2004, and concludes that what occurred during the "rebellion" was in fact a modern coup d'état, financed and orchestrated by forces allied with the US government. Hallward provides extensive documentation for his claims in interviews he has given on the subject. -Wikipedia