Emergency Planners Do It Via Satellite

EMERGENCY Planners at Oxfordshire County Council are making plans to maintain communications via satellite in the event of a terrorist attack on local telephone exchanges.

Learning lessons from the 9/11 attack in New York when communications were lost after masts were destroyed in the blasts, the County Council?s Emergency Planning team is working with local firms, Calkin Communications of Tackley and eXcelerate Technology LTD to ensure uninterrupted communications.

Special equipment has been installed on a vehicle used by emergency planners so that they can communicate by voice and email via satellite broadband if local telephone exchanges are damaged.

Mark Calkin of Calkin Communications said: ” I am very pleased to be working on this project with my own County Council and this will be the first installation in local government.”
John Kelly Emergency Planning Officer at Oxfordshire County Council said: “I?m very pleased that we are able to use a local firm with expertise in this field. We need to plan for a catastrophic disruption to the communications network and this equipment will give us a go-anywhere capability which will have uses outside the emergency field.

“This new equipment will meet the preparedness duties required of us under the Civil Contingencies Act. I?m sure that this initiative will be of use in other areas of the UK to guard against failures in the landline communications system.”