Luxembourg, 1 October 2014 – SES TechCom, a wholly owned subsidiary of SES S.A. (NYSE Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG), announces that it has received the prestigious “Changing Lives Award” at the VSAT 2014 conference in London.
The “Changing Lives Award” highlights and recognises inspiring initiatives that has significantly impacted telecommunications in a community, assisting in alleviating hardship and contributing to subsequent economic and social development.
emergency.lu was developed and implemented as a public-private partnership by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg in collaboration with a consortium of Luxembourg companies and organisations – SES TechCom, Hitec and Luxembourg Air Rescue. It is designed to help the humanitarian and civil protection community in the field to (re-) establish telecommunication services and support the effective communication and coordination of first responders. emergency.lu can be deployed anywhere in the world within hours of a natural catastrophe or man-made crisis, thus dramatically reducing the deployment time of traditional communications systems.
Gerhard Bethscheider, Managing Director of SES TechCom, stated: “The emergency.lu platform is an innovative end-to-end communication service for the international humanitarian community, designed to improve the effectiveness of rapid response to natural disasters or man-made crises. SES is proud to be associated with emergency.lu and its much needed relief efforts, having helped to establish the system and providing world-wide coverage through its global satellite fleet.”
The initial idea for emergency.lu came after the devastating 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, resulting in search and rescue teams’ inability to provide vitally needed help due to the lack of communication and coordination following the disaster. First deployed in South Sudan, emergeny.lu also assisted relief efforts after the devastation caused in central Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan, primarily through the restoration of connectivity to humanitarian workers.
In total, SES has performed six humanitarian aid missions and numerous additional demonstrations and training courses to civil protection and humanitarian aid organizations around the world in Mali, South Sudan, Venezuela, Nepal and the Philippines.
Once delivered to the disaster zone, an emergency.lu telecom terminal can be connected to a satellite antenna in less than one hour. The uplinks and downlinks provide high-speed internet connectivity for voice, data and image transmission. Wireless local networks allow aid workers on the spot to register their laptops, tablets and cell phones using the satellite capacity at no cost.
The global C-band satellite coverage, provided by SES, has sufficient and permanently allocated capacity to cover the communication needs of two simultaneous large-scale humanitarian disasters anywhere in the world.
For further information please contact:
Yves Feltes
Media Relations
Tel. +352 710 725 311
Yves.feltes@ses.com
