Telecom nonprofit sends teams to Haiti to aid with communications

Telecom nonprofit sends teams to Haiti

NEW YORK — The French nonprofit Telecoms Sans Frontiers is sending two teams of responders to Haiti to help facilitate communications as rescue workers dig through the country’s earthquake-battered capital.

The group’s U.S. representative, Paul Margie, said a three-person team based in Nicaragua was en route to Santo Domingo, the capital of Haiti’s neighbor, the Dominican Republic. Another six-person team from France was also on the way.

Margie said it is a fairly large deployment for the group, which also sent out multiple teams after a series of typhoons hit the Philippines last year.

Telecoms Sans Frontiers, or Telecommunications Without Borders, was set up just over a decade ago and has funding from the U.N. Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation as well as corporate donors.

The group’s workers deploy to natural disasters and conflict zones with laptop-sized pieces of equipment that emit Wi-Fi signals for phone calls and Internet access. Margie said the group’s hotspots allow 20 to 30 people to communicate at once.

The group works with U.N. emergency workers and sets up outposts to help people trying to get in touch with family and relatives.