Unified Communications Provides Lifeline to Doctors in Haiti

The IP communications industry rallied together to help victims of the recent disaster in Haiti, providing a true case study of SIP trunking and unified communications at work.

One of the results of the massive earthquake that shook the region was the destruction of much of the traditional telephony infrastructure. Wireline telephony was down. Many cellular towers collapsed, leaving everyone in Haiti further isolated and making communications for rescuers rushing to the scene difficult if not impossible. Victims were also unable to connect with family and friends on the island or elsewhere in the world.

FMC/UC solutions provider Business Mobility Systems (www.businessmobilitysystems.com), supported by solutions from Ingate, provided a group of American doctors who rushed to Haiti with an end-to-end fixed mobile convergence/unified communications setup to enable VoIP, texting capability and Internet access. The solution needed to work with the only communications network that was functioning, the GSM packet network, and with any Wi-Fi networks that were set up and working to establish voice communications wherever the doctors found themselves.

The doctors were given Nokia (News - Alert) E-71 smartphones equipped with the bMC client, the Hosted Business Mobility 1 Service. An Ingate SIParator was installed at the edge of Business Mobility Systems’ network in Michigan to provide far-end NAT traversal, which made it possible for the VoIP calls to be completed.

The smartphones were also outfitted with a Scosche SolBAT solar-powered recharger to allow functionality during power failures, and to give the medical team greater mobility. As a result, the medical team was able to get set up almost immediately as soon as they reached Haiti, making calls and texting colleagues back in the U.S.

“With this solution our doctors were able to reach anywhere in the world quickly and easily, to get consults, facilitate treatment, order supplies on the fly and also help victims report back to families,” says Dr. Troy Silvernale, who led the medical team. “Within minutes of hitting the ground in Haiti we were up and running. Being able to set up so quickly literally saved lives.”

When we talk about unified communications, it is far too easy to get lost in complicated rhetoric and technical terms. The bottom line is this: Unified communications is essentially the use of IP-based technology and solutions to help people communicate the way they need to, regardless of where they are. And with SIP, these kinds of deployments – even using equipment from a variety of vendors – enable fast deployments. In the case of Haiti, this kind of speed was critical. IT

Steven Johnson (News - Alert) is president of Ingate Systems (www.ingate.com).

» Internet Telephony Magazine Table of Contents