{"id":68000,"date":"2017-06-16T19:24:49","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T11:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/ses-friendship-how-satellites-fit-into-humanitarianism-2\/"},"modified":"2017-06-16T19:24:49","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T11:24:49","slug":"ses-friendship-how-satellites-fit-into-humanitarianism-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/ses-friendship-how-satellites-fit-into-humanitarianism-2\/","title":{"rendered":"SES & Friendship: How Satellites Fit into Humanitarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Satellite communications has completely changed the way Friendship<\/strong>, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Bangladesh, administers its humanitarian services. One of its biggest accomplishments to date was the establishment of three hospital boats to serve ultra-poor communities along riverbanks, a feat that Friendship founder Runa Khan said could not have been achieved without the connectivity provided by SES<\/strong>\u2019 Satmed e-health platform.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh is known for its swollen rivers, which deposit large accumulations of silt and sediment called \u201cchars.\u201d Farming families inhabit these fertile islands, but because the chars get washed away over time, it\u2019s impossible to build permanent structures like hospitals nearby. To provide medical assistance to families in this area, Friendship built three makeshift hospitals on boats \u2014 and on these barges SES installed Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) to establish communications with far-flung doctors via Satmed.<\/p>\n

According to Khan, Friendship\u2019s primary objective is not just to give the poor access to better technology, but to create an ecosystem that can be built upon to improve quality of life across the community. \u201cThe ultra-poor need everything. They need health, clothes, education, governance, access to finance, the whole package \u2014 because they don\u2019t have anything,\u201d she told Via Satellite<\/em>. \u201cWe started by creating an ecosystem for their needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Runa
Runa Khan, founder and executive director at Friendship. Photo: Friendship.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Nicole Robinson, SES\u2019 vice president of government market solutions, said the company had a similar thought in mind when it began developing its end-to-end solutions geared toward humanitarian efforts. In an interview with Via Satellite<\/em>, she noted that having an \u201cenduring presence\u201d after a new communications network has been established is one of the main factors driving the needs of the humanitarian sector.<\/p>\n

To that end, Friendship has turned to satellites to enable holistic solutions for the communities it serves. \u201cThe people we deal with are 80 percent migratory. We built hospital management software, Human Resources (HR) software, and training tools because they are so far away from the mainland and need to be consistently monitored,\u201d Khan said. Most important, she added, was the creation of a patient database that doctors in the area can leverage at any time. \u201cWe can manage that so much better because we have real-time data connectivity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Khan also sees satellites as a necessity for setting up functional schools in the region. \u201cThere can be a whole island with 2,000 people and not even one can read, write or do basic mathematics,\u201d she said. To educate these civilians, Friendship partners with teachers from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to record lessons remotely. But although a limited education is better than none at all, Khan said she hopes to see the connectivity improve further to enable classroom sessions that stream in real time. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be VSAT but it must be uninterrupted. Children come walking from 2 kilometers away; we don\u2019t want them to have to go back because there is no electricity or no connection,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Khan said she hopes to see satellite technology continue to develop so that Friendship can take advantage of better connectivity to create new solutions. \u201cWe would like to have a satellite-based emergency response system,\u201d she said, because not only does Bangladesh have one of the highest population densities in the world, the country is also particularly vulnerable to climate change. \u201cIslands are breaking and reforming and with climate change this is going to get much worse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Other solutions the organization hopes to implement include satellite-based drones to deliver emergency supplies such as fresh blood and a satellite-enhanced GIS mapping system, since the country\u2019s land formations change so often along the riverbelt.<\/p>\n

As for SES, the company has introduced a suite of new solutions for the humanitarian market, including its Government+ Rapid Response Vehicle (RRV). Satellite trucks that provide data links certainly exist already, but Robinson described the RRV as more of a \u201cSwiss army knife,\u201d as it comes equipped with an Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aerostat balloon to monitor the immediate area, and also generates a communications bubble within a range of 25 miles, not unlike a tethered cell tower.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, applications such as SES\u2019 emergency.lu, another of its e-health solutions, can be swapped in and out of the vehicle\u2019s tool rack, meaning the RRV can be customized to fit a range of customer needs and environments. In the humanitarian sector specifically, Robinson said SES hopes to find a role beyond just short-term emergency response and integrate itself into more permanent solutions. This is primarily evident in the longer-lasting partnerships it is forming with organizations such as Friendship. \u201cWe now are beginning with the end user\u2019s requirements \u2026 Instead of just lighting up transponders, providing bandwidth to our customers and wishing them good luck, we are now designing end-to-end solutions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Robinson noted that the change has already started to have a positive impact on the balance sheet. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing an increase in percentage in our book of business that\u2019s attributable to what we\u2019re calling bandwidth plus,\u201d she said, which includes all of the additional capabilities, equipment, and program management SES is beginning to offer on top of its basic bandwidth services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re finding that it\u2019s what more and more customers are desiring. In some cases you find that if you give customers broadband for free, they wouldn\u2019t know what to do with it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

When asked to speculate on the profitability of humanitarian-focused products like Satmed, Robinson admitted that they probably won\u2019t be the key growth driver for the company\u2019s government vertical in the future. Still, SES sees value in such services on another level. \u201cThis effort really pulls at the heartstrings of SES,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s something very near and dear to us and something we feel responsible to contribute to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Satellite communications has completely changed the way Friendship, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Bangladesh, administers its humanitarian services. One of its biggest accomplishments to date was the establishment of three hospital boats to serve ultra-poor communities along riverbanks, a feat that Friendship founder Runa Khan said could not have been achieved without the connectivity provided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}