September 24, 2005

By Nirmal Mitra

Two township officials and a first-aid volunteer were closely watching the progress of Hurricane Rita as they camped out Friday in a motor home in Pass Christian, Miss., after delivering a load of cleaning materials to residents of the hurricane-ravaged community.

"The bulk of the storm is missing us, but we're getting the side effects — rain and warnings of severe weather," said Mike Simpson, the team's leader, in a telephone interview from Pass Christian, which was under a tornado watch Friday.

September 24, 2005

By Alex Paul

Imagine virtually all of the trees in Linn and Benton counties blown over at the same time. That would be a first step toward understanding the actual damage experienced by communities along the Gulf of Mexico, Matt Turkington, an Oregon State University senior and disaster volunteer, said about life after Hurricane Katrina.

Turkington, 22, of Beaverton, arrived Sept. 10 in Biloxi, Miss., as leader of a 10-member volunteer team whose goal is helping communities establish Internet-based communication systems, via computers and special telephones.

September 26, 2005

By Dibya Sarkar

The country needs a more comprehensive alert system and better protocols to redirect emergency calls during crises that disable public-safety dispatch centers, the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman said.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin added that first responders need interoperable and mobile wireless communications systems that they can rapidly deploy anywhere. That includes smart radios, which users can easily tune to different frequencies and formats. The communications industry has been working on such devices, called software-defined radios, but has developed only prototypes.

September 23, 2005

By D. W. Gardner

With Hurricane Rita bearing down on the Gulf Coast, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told a Senate Committee that the nation needs a truly mobile communications infrastructure that will draw on the latest technologies in disaster situations.

“If we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, it is that we cannot rely solely on terrestrial communications,” Martin told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Thursday. “When radio towers are knocked down, satellite communications are, in some instances, the most effective means of communicating.

September 22, 2005

By Staff

Statement of Jeffrey A. Citron Chairman & CEO, Vonage Holdings Corp.

Committee on Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation

September 22, 2005

Good morning Chairman Stevens, Co-Chairman Inouye and esteemed members of the Committee. My name is Jeffrey Citron, Chairman and CEO of Vonage Holdings Corporation. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. On behalf of the entire Vonage family and our one million users, I want to extend my deep sympathy for those who lost family and friends, and for all those who are now homeless as a result of the Gulf Coast disaster.

September 22, 2005

By Paul Kapustka

If all goes as planned, Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron will testify before a Senate panel Thursday about communication companies' responses to Hurricane Katrina, showing that Congress isn't mimicing the deaf ear shown to advanced IP services lately by the FCC.

According to a draft presentation, Citron is expected to tell the Senate Commerce committee that the government should not favor single technologies when building a new emergency communications infrastructure, but should instead consider multiple, redundant options to better ensure that at least one system survives.

September 22, 2005

By Staff

It took nature a moment to expose the vulnerable side to the world's lone superpower. By the time Hurricane Katrina was done, prevention was not one of the options. What remained was taking measure of the losses and building back what nature had demolished.

The KatrinaHelp project went into action shortly after the killer hurricane, brought to life by willing volunteers across the globe. It was put together by volunteers who made the promise of the Internet felt in December 2004 with the SEA-EAT (South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami) project.

KatrinaHelp used tools like Wiki, VoIP and blogs to get things done. Dina Mehta, researcher and Mumbai-based blogger, was one of the volunteers bringing together those offering help and those who needed it. She also contributed to the KatrinaHelp Wiki, and talked to volunteers who called in offering help on the team's virtual call centre.

September 19, 2005

By Staff

Force10 Networks has announced that Vonage Networks, a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp., is deploying the TeraScale E-Series switch/routers to increase the capacity of its nationwide network and support an increase in VoIP calls over the next several years.

September 20, 2005

By Staff

Level 3 Communications announced the launch of its Level(3) E-911 Direct service as part of its VoIP portfolio. The offering includes both Level 3's fixed location and nomadic VoIP E-911 capabilities, supporting an FCC-compliant E-911 solution for interconnected VoIP providers. Using Level(3) E-911 Direct service VoIP providers can achieve compliance with the FCC's mandate for VoIP providers to deliver to their customers E-911 functionality.

Vonage has become the first customer to select the Level(3) E-911 Direct service to support nomadic VoIP customers. Level 3 anticipates that its nomadic solution will be implemented in the fourth quarter 2005, and the two companies plan to begin deploying E-911 service for Vonage customers in that quarter.

September 19, 2005

By Staff

Azimuth Systems has announced that Vonage Network, a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp, is employing Azimuth’s W-Series 802.11 test platform. The W-Series will be used to validate Vonage’s Wi-Fi solution for the soon-to-be-released Wi-Fi handset for the residential and SOHO markets.

Earlier this year, Vonage announced its plans to roll out a Wi-Fi handset to augment its broadband VoIP services, offering its customers mobility across 802.11 networks. “As the leading provider of full-featured, affordable, broadband phone services across North America, we must be able to certify and validate that our VoIP solution, as well as the equipment we are deploying, meets our standards for availability and quality-of-voice service,” said Louis Mamakos, CTO of Vonage Holdings Corp. “Azimuth’s unmatched testing capabilities--particularly in the areas of Wi-Fi performance, multi-vendor interoperability, and industry standards conformance--help us support that our customers receive a high level of satisfaction from Vonage’s Wi-Fi phone.”