Vodafone Foundation creating instant mobile networks for disaster areas
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Version 0 of 1. It took a team of telecoms engineers two days to travel to the heart of the cyclone wreckage in Odisha province, but just two hours to fire up the emergency mobile phone network that is now providing a lifeline for aid workers and families dispersed by India's most devastating storm for 14 years. The three-metre high tripod antenna in the village of Chhatrapur is sending its signal over an area where flooded roads and flattened cellular towers would otherwise have caused a communications blackout. It is one of the instant networks managed by the Vodafone Foundation, the multinational telecoms group's charitable arm. The initiative began last year and is now supporting emergency response teams around the world. "When you are one of thousands of people who are completely cut off, one of the first things you want to do is communicate to your loved ones that you have actually survived," says Andrew Dunnett, the foundation's director. Designed to fit into four suitcases, the equipment is light enough to travel on commercial flights or in the back of a jeep. During the past 18 months, it has been despatched to South Sudan to aid refugees from the border war, to Kenya's remote Kaikor region during a famine, and to the Philippines after hurricane Pablo. A typical mobile-phone tower can take months to build at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. The DIY version has a shorter range – up to 12km (seven miles) - but can support heavy traffic of up to 15,000 simultaneous text messages or 100 calls. Consisting of an antenna, a laptop and a base transceiver station (a box that houses the electronics that create the signal), the equipment is powered by petrol generators and can be raised up using scaffolding polls or whatever materials come to hand. Communication is initially just between phones in the signal area, but satellite links, which can take a little longer to secure, then relay calls to the wider world. The equipment is simple, but it can save lives. When the Red Cross arrived in Kaikor last February, the nearest signal to their clinic was 80km away along a dirt track. Supplies were a six-hour drive away, and once teams had set off for the one- or two-week journey to fetch food and medicine, they could not be contacted. In July, Nadio Ekai Alany and his six-year-old son were shot by cattle raiders armed with machine guns while tending their animals. They were able to call for help from a nearby chieftain's home, which despite being theoretically out of range of the Kaikor mast, was located within a small pocket of reception. Within 24 hours they had been transported to the Red Cross clinic. "Without the network, nothing could have been done for them," says Mark Lominito Lomoro, nursing supervisor at the camp. "We've had an improvement in the life of the people of Kaikor, not only in their health, but in the economy. Families are able to get money sent back from relatives in the city. By passing money between phones, villagers can buy household appliances or food for the day." M-Pesa, the mobile money-transfer service moving payments through Kenya's largely unbanked economy at such velocity that it has been blamed for inflation, made an appearance in Kaikor as soon as the instant network was switched on. Crucially, while installed for emergencies, the temporary masts remain until local operators provide a permanent solution. In Kaikor, Safaricom has now taken over. The concept of humanitarian calling was pioneered by Telecoms Sans Frontieres, a team of engineers who met in Bosnia and now run their mission from a former dental surgery in the Pyrenees. Vodafone contributed to its funding for years before deciding to create its own teams of volunteers. The company has now trained 70 of its staff, in 20 countries around the world, to set up instant networks. For Walter Saunders, whose day jobs is catering to the technology needs of the chief executive and his top team, the preparation involved being kidnapped with a bag over his head at a training camp in Wales. Volunteers are taught how to survive exposure to cold, how to behave at checkpoints, and how to pack as lightly as possible. For Saunders, this proved invaluable in South Sudan last summer, when his team had to pare back their luggage to a few items of clothing and a single shared washbag in order to meet the weight requirements for a plane designed to land on dirt tracks. His mission was at Yida camp, an expanse of five square-miles managed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, where over 75,000 people have taken refuge from the Sudanese border war. Here, as in many other places, the phones preceded the network. When the signal first went live, the equipment registered 852 devices within a 3km radius in just one hour. "That was mind-blowing," says Saunders. "We couldn't believe how many phones were in the camp." Initially, the network was reserved for aid workers and the Mongolian troops securing Yida. Then the humanitarian calling began, with three paid workers nominated by camp leaders trained to man fixed calling points, where they managed the queues and the scratch cards used to supply free credit. "There was a lot of laughing and frivolity," says Saunders. "The guys running it were on a real buzz. And then there was the woman who had not spoken to her brother in six years." In isolated communities, the arrival of a signal can solve many problems, but there are limits. "We had an email from the priest in charge of Kaikor," Dunnett recalls. "He said: 'Thanks a lot for the network, this is amazing, now what can you do about the rain?'" Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |