Call for wider use of satellites

Satellite broadband wholesaler BayCity Communications has used the TUANZ rural broadband symposium to release the results of a survey into New Zealand's Civil Defence communications preparedness and underline the importance of having multiple layers of redundancy in telecommunications planning.

According to the presentation given by the company's general manager, Duncan Boennic, New Zealand's civil defence managers rate themselves as only moderately prepared for any major disaster.

"On a scale of one to five, with five being completely prepared, the majority of the 17 organisations surveyed rated their level of preparedness as a three or a four," Boennic said.

"A few areas considered themselves definitely as a four, while two considered their level of preparedness to be at the bottom of the scale," he said.

He referred to statistics from the recent earthquake in China which suggest that in the 100,000 km² area that was affected (a little less than the size of the North Island), 3897 switch centres were destroyed, 28,765 km of cable was destroyed and 142,078 telephone poles were flattened.

He says the satellite was heavily drawn on by the authorities to restore communications, including 2300 satellite mobile handsets and 100 IPSTAR satellite terminals for broadband and VoIP, with generator powered comms up and running within 72 hours.

"The prediction is that in the case of a major earthquake or volcanic eruption in New Zealand, both of which have been forecast as being highly likely in the foreseeable future, disruption to telecommunications in the form of broken fibre cables, downed telephone poles and damaged cellphone towers are all inevitable.

"The results of our survey suggest that after landlines and mobile phones, the next layer of redundancy which is heavily relied on New Zealand wide is two-way mobile radio.

"Radio is cheap, widely available and easy to use but does have limits in terms of coverage and only offers a one-dimensional service," Boennic points out.

"Radio does not deliver the kind of communication that can help with the rapid deployment of appropriate services to areas that need it most, for example sending static or video images from disaster sites or being able to tap into online servers to quickly send information to a wide number of emergency services or volunteers."

Boennic says there is a high level of awareness of the value of satellite in emergency situations, but most New Zealand councils are only equipped with satellite phones and have no other form of satellite connectivity.

"87% of our respondents expressed interest in exploring further the ways that satellite broadband could be used at emergency sites, particularly in conjunction with mobile control centres."

Such mobile control centres are already widely used overseas, including in situations like hurricane Katrina, and the technology is currently available in New Zealand to implement similar solutions.

"Satellite can deliver broadband diversification to our civil defence personnel, powered by generators (less than 1 kW required), and with the new iNetVu dishes, we have complete portability."

Made by Canadian company C-Com, the iNetVu dishes are designed to be installed on a range of mobile environments including trucks, vans and trailers. Once installed the dish can be configured to automatically align itself to a predetermined satellite at the press of a button.

Boennic says that the Hutt City Council's Emergency Management Office has already trialled a portable satellite solution, and satellite broadband was also used successfully during the Parahora forest fire in February 2008 and at the search headquarters during a recent five-day search and rescue operation at Rimutaka Forest Park.