{"id":232145,"date":"2016-07-13T06:06:05","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T20:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=232145"},"modified":"2016-07-13T06:06:05","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T20:06:05","slug":"district-court-goes-high-tech-acquires-satellite-internet-trailer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/district-court-goes-high-tech-acquires-satellite-internet-trailer\/","title":{"rendered":"District Court goes high tech, acquires satellite Internet trailer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The U.S. District Court for the NMI\u2019s newly acquired satellite Internet trailer undergoes final testing yesterday at the Fishing Base in Garapan. The federal court purchased the equipment due to last year\u2019s communication blackout in the CNMI followed by Typhoon Soudelor\u2019s destruction of electrical infrastructure on Saipan. (Ferdie de la Torre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Learning from last year\u2019s communication blackout that left the CNMI \u201cdisconnected\u201d from the outside world, the U.S. District Court for the NMI has acquired a satellite Internet trailer. <\/p>\n

Federal court staff, with the assistance of Keith Bosarge of the AT&T Vanguard Services that designs the trailer and the systems, completed yesterday the final test of the high tech communication equipment at the Fishing Base in Garapan.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great. We got a better signal here [Fishing Base] than we got behind the Horiguchi Building,\u201d said U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Deputy Clerk William J. Bezzant in an interview.<\/p>\n

Bezzant said the satellite Internet trailer, which just arrived on the island from the U.S. mainland a week ago, will be utilized for their program called continuity of operations (COOP) during a disaster. <\/p>\n

Bezzant said the trailer can be deployed out at the Fishing Base or away from any building. <\/p>\n

He said satellite Internet trailer doesn\u2019t need external power or anything. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt just needs a place where you can see a satellite up in the sky. And it got its own onboard generator. All its electronics are onboard,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bezzant said they will just press the button, start up the generator, and it automatically lifts up the satellite dish, aims it automatically at the satellite, and finds the satellite.<\/p>\n

The trailer has a capacity of a two-week fuel supply. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have at presently is two megabit per second download speed, one megabit per second upload speed,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Bezzant said the reason for acquiring this trailer is because one year ago yesterday, Saipan was in a communication blackout.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t connect with the outside world. We couldn\u2019t conduct court business. We couldn\u2019t even tell the world that we are still alive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bezzant said the island then had no banking system, which was frozen and collapsed temporarily. <\/p>\n

He recalled that the hotels, the courts, and the airlines couldn\u2019t do business.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople couldn\u2019t withdraw even $20 out of their bank account to feed their family because the ATM didn\u2019t work. The banks couldn\u2019t work until they eventually found some way to sort of communicate with Guam,\u201d Bezzant said.<\/p>\n

The communication blackout, he said, was followed closely with Typhoon Soudelor that destroyed the electrical infrastructure on the island.<\/p>\n

He said the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. couldn\u2019t generate electricity for sometime under Typhoon Soudelor.<\/p>\n

Bezzant said this area also has a history of earthquakes and other kinds of natural disaster. <\/p>\n

Bezzant said the U.S. courts were good enough to acquire this satellite communications trailer and send it out here.<\/p>\n

So in the event of a disaster, Bezzant said, in a course of a few minutes or less than an hour, they could hook this thing up to a car and tow it to a just any open area where they can see the sky for the satellite. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnlock it, press the button, start up the generator, lift the satellite dish, connect to the satellite, and in less than an hour, if we are in a hurry in 30 minutes, we could have telephone, voiceover Internet, and telephone service,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bezzant said they will be able to connect up to all other servers, and be able to conduct court business, probation office business, and the marshal office.<\/p>\n

He added that they will also be able to support the emergency responders with communication service, data and voice communications.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we are very happy to have this emergency response capability,\u201d Bezzant said. <\/p>\n

Bezzant said the satellite Internet trailer, which costs around $300,000, will be shared between the NMI and Guam District Courts back and forth during disasters.<\/p>\n

Bezzant said it\u2019s pricey but it\u2019s highly effective. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs you also saw a year ago from now what total economic collapse looks like. It\u2019s not pretty. And so really it\u2019s expensive but is something necessary for disaster recovery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bezzant said the equipment will support the District Court, Probation Office, The Marshal Service Office, and to support other federal agencies on the island and other emergency responders. <\/p>\n

Keith Bosarge said their company, AT&T Vanguard Services, is based in Redmond, Washington. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a third generation of our emergency communications trailer,\u201d the AT&T professional network design engineer said.<\/p>\n

Bosarge said the trailer provides communications with a touch of a button when there is no infrastructure anywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can get you online and working in a matter of minutes,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Bosarge said this is a lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. <\/p>\n

He said they built several mobile units on trailers designed to get communications backlog. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so this is the product we have now,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learning from last year\u2019s communication blackout that left the CNMI \u201cdisconnected\u201d from the outside world,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":232151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[56,26,650,12492],"class_list":["post-232145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-business-3","tag-cnmi","tag-communication","tag-guam-district-courts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}