Cutting-edge telecom help reconnect Asia's tsunami-displaced people

Cutting-edge telecom help reconnect Asia's tsunami-displaced people

Edward Harris, Associated Press, Blang Bintang, Aceh

Before the killer tsunami leveled his house and swept away his
daughter, Umar Bin Adam had never used a computer.

Now, squatting in a makeshift refugee camp in a schoolyard on
an Indonesian island, he taps a number into a satellite phone,
mystified but grateful for the high-tech help in his hunt for his
daughter.

"For me, it's really a big help. I can communicate with my
family," Bin Adam, 38, said after replacing the black handset
connected to the nearby dish that beams his words into space.
Thousands of foreign aid workers flooding into the Asian zones
hit hardest by the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami are bringing
sophisticated phones, radios and computers -- altering the
communications landscape in some of the world's poorest, most-
remote lands.

People in stricken regions say they hope the disaster-response
crowd will leave behind the gear when they go -- and aid workers
say at least the mobile-phone networks they're rebuilding to help
foster the aid effort likely will remain.

Humanitarian workers point to satellite phones and remote
Internet connections as among the latest tools helping them
coordinate the world's biggest-ever aid-delivery effort.

In northern Sumatra's Aceh Province, closest to the epicenter
of the earthquake and hardest hit by the tsunami, the disaster
ruined many mobile-phone signal-repeater posts, leaving residents
and aid workers alike cursing poor coverage and dropped signals.

Many foreign aid workers leapfrog the shaky mobile system via
satellites. There are now two networks for handheld satellite
phones and laptop-sized systems with more bandwidth can be used
to access the Internet.

Survivors in this region where 106,000 were killed in the
disaster aren't so lucky.

In the provincial capital Banda Aceh the tremors and waves
smashed countless Internet cafes and many survivors lost their
mobile phones in their flight to safety. Terrestrial telephone
lines are down in many places.

Sweden's Ericsson AB and other major telecommunications
companies are helping rebuild the mobile-phone network smashed by
the waves in Asia, with Ericsson donating ten radio-base stations
for Banda Aceh's network, along with hundreds of mobile phones
and staff.

U.S.-based Motorola Inc. says it has donated the equivalent of
US$3 million in cash and equipment across tsunami-stricken Asia.
Dag Nielsen, head of Ericsson's disaster-response team, says
Banda Aceh's mobile network will be vastly improved, using
technology called GPRS which has greater data-transmission
possibilities than the former network. Aid workers will be the
first to benefit, but in the long term it will help the Acehnese.

Nielsen, who helped set up a network in Afghanistan's war-
ruined capital, Kabul, said that unlike earlier humanitarian
missions there are no plans to dismantle Banda Aceh's boosted
mobile-phone network when the foreigners leave.

Across the Indian Ocean, in Sri Lanka, officials maintained
links between rebel and government forces, helping prevent
fighting from breaking out in the tsunami chaos in the country
where nearly 31,000 died.

"We kept up the contacts with both the sides using mobile and
satellite phones," said Helen Olafsdottir, spokeswoman for the
Norwegian-headed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, which oversees a
2002 cease-fire.

A France-based aid group called "Telecoms sans Frontieres" --
or "Telecoms without Borders" -- is helping people like Bin Adam
contact loved-ones by setting up satellite phones in refugee
camps.

While younger, urban Acehnese are accustomed to surfing the
Internet and chatting on mobile phones, older refugees are
thrilled and bewildered at finding their words sent through
space.

The European Union-funded program is aimed at helping
reconnect shattered communities, while offering a chance for
panicked survivors to hash out their emotions.

"In this kind of disaster, there's often post-traumatic stress
disorder, so it's important to talk, to release your emotions
with your support group, which is friends and family," says John
Abo, who helps run the telephones set up under a tent in the
schoolyard south of Banda Aceh where about 1,000 survivors are
sheltering.

Ragged children inspect the black, shoebox-sized telephones,
which are connected by a line to small dishes set up several
yards (meters) away, aimed at the heavens.

Bin Adam looks glum as he hangs up after his call, which
yielded no news of his daughter Juliana, whom he last saw in
their home on the morning of Dec. 26.

There's one thing all the fancy technology can't do to help
Bin Adam.

The rising waters that snatched away his daughter and home
also swept away everything inside the house, including the paper
on which he had jotted all telephone numbers except the one he
had memorized and already dialed.