ReliefWeb

Migrating towards enhanced communications

This year, the ETS in North-East Nigeria played a vital part in a global connectivity project. The migration of satellite connectivity equipment across multiple sites in North-East Nigeria means better quality communications services for humanitarians. The ETS caught up with Lionel Marre – project manager of the initiative – to get his perspective.

In times of chaos, the ability to communicate becomes more important than ever. The sweeping impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the existing protection crisis in North-East Nigeria, has meant a greater need for fast and reliable communications services for the response community.

This is exactly what the UN global connectivity project – which almost all UN agencies have joined – has set out to achieve. As global lead of emergency telecommunications, aviation and logistics sectors, the World Food Programme (WFP) is at the forefront of the project. Based in WFP Headquarters in Rome, Italy,
Lionel Marre has spent the last 18 months developing a large-scale satellite terminal migration and upgrade project to enhance connectivity in 332 humanitarian sites worldwide – including in Nigeria.

On a sweltering August afternoon, a bustling team of field engineers arrived in Maiduguri to commence the migration in North-East Nigeria. They were tasked with migrating connectivity services in 14 sites hosting the response community – including offices, warehouses and humanitarian hubs – by installing new satellite equipment and providing upgrades to the existing technology. The ETS took the lead in coordinating the migration of 11 of those sites.

The first port of call for the ETS was the Red Roof humanitarian hub, where more than 90 responders from UN agencies and NGOs are based. The field engineers were met by Ahmed Yusuf-Mainji,
ETS IT Operations Assistant [pictured above]. Ahmed explains that he found it extremely important to be on the ground with the team, despite facing challenges brought about by COVID-19 restrictions. Always careful to wear a mask and practice physical distancing while carrying out the migration, he was glad to be “on the ground, providing much-needed technical and logistical support to ensure a smooth transition between services – humanitarians need connectivity at any given point.”

Reaching deep field locations proved much more challenging. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and limited helicopter rotations, the ETS needed to apply agility in securing flight slots.

Now fully implemented across all sites, Lionel explains that the upgrades will mean faster Internet connectivity services: “This new Internet service provider has a fully automated system that checks every site worldwide, 19 times per second, to detect the Internet speed needed per site.” It will ensure the speed and efficiency in communications needed by humanitarians to facilitate the entire response.