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Milpitas, Calif. (Sept. 6, 2005) -- Globalstar LLC, the world's most widely used handheld satellite phone provider, said today that it has deployed more than 10,000 handheld satellite phones to customers in the Gulf region, primarily government agencies and relief workers, within the first week after Hurricane Katrina landed. Globalstar also successfully increased the capacity of its satellite network to ensure continued communications service to the region.
“As the tragedy in the Gulf continues to develop, our thoughts and prayers are with those affected, said Jay Monroe, Chairman and CEO of Globalstar, LLC. “Our first priority is to ensure that Globalstar provides needed communications to government agencies, rescue workers, and relief organizations. Now, we are working to donate additional phones with unlimited free service to shelters and with journalists who are visiting the most affected areas so that people can call loved ones.”
Monroe noted that the Globalstar network continues to function as designed and intended, with satellite phones and modems providing continuous communications service where land-based cellular and fixed-line services are unavailable.
“This is exactly the kind of situation that we have planned and trained for, and our network was designed from the start to provide uninterrupted service regardless of events on the ground,” Monroe said. “We have taken aggressive measures and increased calling capacity by many multiples to successfully keep ahead of demand. Globalstar phones are working reliably. In fact, the only challenge our customers are reporting is that the cellular and landline numbers that they are trying to call are still not consistently available.”
Globalstar has also accelerated shipments from equipment vendors and increased its daily activation and provisioning capabilities by over fifteen-fold to ensure that equipment continues arriving as needed.
The company has also increased staffing at the Globalstar satellite phone hotline at 1-800-651-4437, and at the main Globalstar Customer Care center. “It’s “all hands on deck” for us right now. Our customer care and distribution staff is providing full support throughout this crisis, and will continue to do so as long as necessary,” Monroe said. “While current wait times and activation times can be longer than normal at points, every call will be answered.”
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