When a catastrophic earthquake struck Haïti on January 12th, 2010, one of our iDirect V-Sat system was flown to the disaster zone by jet on January 16th, as part of a joint effort between Québecor, Xplornet, Kusat and Reporters Sans Frontières. The system was used for emergency relief effort during the weeks that followed the earthquake. It is still in service today to provide reliable voice and data communications between Haïti's independent press and the outside World.
Our V-Sat system along with other equipment is loaded on a jet in Montréal
The Jet takes off a few hours later, destination: Santo Domingo
Upon arrival in Santo Domingo, the equipment is loaded on a pick-up truck
and driven
to Haiti's capital since its airport is still out of service.
RSF manages to locate a suitable location to setup its offices in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Right next door, the remains of a house that did not survive the earthquake.
Our iDirect V-Sat antenna is installed by Vidéotron techs following our step by step guidance.
The antenna is pointed to Telstar 14 located at 63°W Longitude
The press center's core consists of a few laptops with video-conferencing capability
and an IP phone.
There are 20 other computers and two telephone lines in an adjacent room for journalists.
A HughesNet 1.20m Ku-band system, provided by Xplornet and
Kusat
was also installed for Web connectivity.
Months after the earthquake, both systems are still in place and are being
used daily
on
our standard business plans to bridge Port-au-Prince journalists with the rest of the World.
We stock iDirect systems in our own warehouse and can provide turnkey systems
within
short notice
(12 hours) to almost
any location in North America,the Caribbean and Central America.
