In looking at the written testimony submitted by Satellite Industry Association Chairman Tony Trujillo for a Sept. 29 Congressional hearing on the lessons learned in the aftermath of Katrina, the first thing that comes to mind is, “Haven’t I heard this before?”

In the hours following the terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center Sept. 11, 2001, the only available network to offer communications coverage within the city was satellites. Fast forward to August 2005 and once again satellites take center stage following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in Louisiana, creating widespread destruction along the U.S. Gulf Coast and triggering the flooding of New Orleans.

In his testimony, Trujillo told the House Commerce Committee‘s Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet that as of Sept 21, “nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina inflicted its damage on the terrestrial communications network in the New Orleans area, only 60 percent of the cell phone networks were working properly, 70 percent of the broadcast stations were functioning and roughly 2 million calls were still failing. On the other hand, and in stark contrast to the failures in the terrestrial networks, fixed and mobile satellite services were nearly 100 percent operational on Sept. 21, just as they were” in the hours and days immediately following Katrina.

The performance of satellite communications in the aftermath of Katrina demonstrates again that the technology is well-suited for providing reliable communications for emergency personnel working in disaster areas, Trujillo said. “There have been calls for a new communications network for first responders and funding for new technologies that can withstand such disasters,” he said. “Satellites can and should be an integral part of these new networks. The required capacity is available today from commercial satellite operators and is widely available to corporations, government users and consumers across the globe. The intelligent integration of satellite and terrestrial technologies can create the communication system that our first responders deserve.”

Trujillo offered four key recommendations: that satellites be an essential component of future critical communications networks; that satellite capacity and equipment be purchased and positioned prior to disasters; that satellite operators and personnel be credentialed as first responders (Trujillo noted that satellite crews were denied access to the areas affected by Katrina); and that satellite spectrum be preserved and protected from interference.

Will Congress Finally Act?

Trujillo’s recommendations should not surprise anyone within the satellite industry. However, the question facing the government and the satellite industry is whether policy makers and legislators will actually move forward on procuring the necessary equipment prior to the next catastrophe.

From the satellite industry’s perspective, a disaster such as Katrina can be a drain on the resources of satellite companies since some of their satellite capacity and equipment is donated to emergency personnel. While no one has quantified the financial impact of the humanitarian efforts on the satellite service providers (and we certainly do not expect anyone to publicly complain about lost revenues), one has to expect that those in the satellite industry are looking at such events to help drive sales to first responders on all levels of government.

But does the charitable response of the satellite industry in the aftermath of Katrina offer a disincentive to government to procure capacity and equipment in advance? Trujillo, in an interview with Satellite News following the hearing, said it is not possible for the industry to donate enouugh satellite capacity and services to meet the demand created by a disaster recovery effort.

“The problem [with Katrina] is that it wasn’t enough,” Trujillo said. “Even 20,000 satellite phones and terminals for an area the size of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana is just a drop in the bucket. Yes, it had some positive effects. But you probably needed 200,000 rather than 20,000 mobile satellite phones and terminals to really make a difference. You’ve got to have a pretty substantial investment on the part of state, local and federal government officials in satellite equipment.”

Trujillo expects Congressional action resulting from this hearing. “I think there is a growing sense among the policy makers like [U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman] Kevin Martin, who spoke today, as well as the members of Congress that we can’t [let these communication problems persist]. In fact, one of the congressmen said, ‘I don’t want to have another hearing in a year to talk about the lessons learned again. We know what the lessons are. We knew what they were four years ago.’

“We don’t want to be the forgotten stepchild anymore,” Trujillo said. “When everything else went down, satellites were still on the job working. I think that has been understood by policy makers and members of Congress.”

At least one executive in the industry shared the perception that Congress will take action.

“Everybody is very focused on the impact of Katrina and what systems worked and what systems didn’t work and what the challenges are,” Alex Good, vice chairman and CEO of Mobile Satellite Ventures, told Satellite News. “I think Congress will take action. I think Congress is very motivated and I think you can expect to see them do some things to ensure that communications networks in times of disasters in the future operate better and more efficiently than they do today.”

Interest also is growing on the state and local government levels. George Spohn, vice president of sales and marketing with Thrane & Thrane, said his company is seeing interest in Inmarsat’s Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service, primarily because it is an Internet protocol (IP)-based network.

“One of the ways to start to get the interoperability [between various first responder networks] is based on the fact that if everything is IP based, then it is really just a matter of is the terrestrial network available, is my private line network available, is the satellite network available,” Spohn told Satellite News. “It is basically using the same software and the same protocols, and the question is what kind of wireless connectivity is available.”

The Next Step

Not everyone is convinced that this event is the tipping point that will spur Congress, as well as state and local government, to finally act to ensure that the funding is made available to procure the necessary equipment and capacity to respond to a problem. And with the federal government operating at a deficit and many state and local governments looking for ways to streamline budgets, there may not be enough momentum generated by satellite’s performance to have an impact during the budgetary processes.

“I don’t know if it is a tipping point. I don’t know if I want to go that far, but it certainly raises the profile of satellite communications from a clunky old technology to a first response technology,” Christopher Baugh, president of Northern Sky Research, told Satellite News. “You would not have seen this satellite communications for emergency response in the government a year or two ago. I don’t want to say this is the thing that pushes VSAT sales or services, but this is an increasing part of the satellite business and because terminals are smaller and bandwidth can be [purchased] fairly easily, it makes sense” for governments to start purchasing more satellite equipment for first responders.

“I think what the satellite industry can do as a whole is to apprise Congress of what we think are the challenges and where we think the opportunities are; to give them our best counsel on what we think possible solutions are,” Good said “Congress is fully capably of doing its analytical review of what needs to be done in the industry to move things forward. I think the industry has to be very candid and honest and open and creative with congress about what can be done because I believe there are technology solutions out there that can make communications networks operate a lot better than they have.”

The key challenge for the satellite industry going forward is to keep that profile high in the months after Katrina is no longer the top news of the day, Baugh said, citing the drop in U.S. interest in ongoing recovery efforts from the December tsunami in Southeast Asia.

“As you know with public events like this, things happen and they go away,” Baugh said. “How much do you hear about the tsunami now [considering] that was such a big issue eight months ago? The U.S. government certainly is running at a deficit and many local and state authorities are actually taxed for revenue. I think there is a big push now and there is a lot of interest in it. Maybe in the budget next year coming from the federal level you may see an increased line item for satellite communications. We need to gauge this a month or two from now when Katrina is a more distant memory when we are moving into Christmas and the winter season to see if this is still front-and-center and fresh in people’s minds. My inclination is it may not be as front-and-center because the public [could] put it on the back burner when it is not the first thing on the news.”

This means it will be a top priority for the satellite industry to do all it can to keep its profile high before the appropriate decision makers. Unfortunately, to accomplish this, the industry will have to continue to keep recent disasters fresh in the public’s mind, Baugh said. “Unfortunately, the public latches onto natural cases of misery for the human race,” he said. “You see tens of thousands of people dying from a tsunami, you see people being flooded out of their homes. Unfortunately those are the cases where you are going to get the most PR. You can’t just say [satellites helped when] a fiber link that was cut by a digger.”

–Gregory Twachtman