[SatNews] SES TechCom, a fully owned subsidiary of SES S.A. (NYSE Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG) has been attributed the prestigious Changing Lives Award at the VSAT 2014 conference in London.
The Changing Lives Award highlights and recognizes an inspiring initiative that has significantly impacted telecommunications in a community, assisting in alleviating hardship and contributing to subsequent economic and social development. emergency.lu was developed and implemented as a public-private partnership by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg in collaboration with a consortium of Luxembourg companies and organisations—SES TechCom, Hitec and Luxembourg Air Rescue. It is designed to help the humanitarian and civil protection community in the field to (re-) establish telecommunication services and support effective communication and coordination of first responders. emergency.lu can be deployed anywhere in the world within hours of a natural catastrophe or man-made crisis, thus dramatically reducing the deployment time of traditional communications systems.
The initial idea for emergency.lu came after the devastating 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, resulting in search and rescue team’s inability to provide the vitally needed help due to the lack of communication and coordination at the onset the disaster. First deployed in South Sudan, the solution also assisted relief efforts after the devastation caused in central Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan, primarily through the restoration of connectivity to humanitarian workers. In total, SES has performed six humanitarian aid missions and numerous additional demonstrations and training courses to civil protection and humanitarian aid organizations around the world in Mali, South Sudan, Venezuela, Nepal and the Philippines. Once delivered to the disaster zone, an emergency.lu telecom terminal can be connected to a satellite antenna in less than one hour. The up- and down links provide high-speed internet connectivity for voice, data and image transmission. Wireless local networks allow aid workers on the spot to register their laptops, tablets and cell phones using the satellite capacity at no cost.
Gerhard Bethscheider, Managing Director of SES TechCom, said, “The emergency.lu platform is an innovative end-to-end communication service for the international humanitarian community designed to improve the effectiveness of rapid response to natural disasters or man-made crises.”
The global C-band satellite coverage, provided by SES, has sufficient and permanently allocated capacity to cover the communication needs of two simultaneous large-scale humanitarian disasters anywhere in the world.
For additional information, please visit https://www.ses.com/techcom
