Humanitarian Comms

SES brings satellite connectivity to refugees in Chad

SES, a space solutions company, says it is expanding humanitarian connectivity at the Farchana refugee settlement in Chad.

It is carrying out this work in cooperation with emergency.lu, the public-private partnership led by Luxembourg’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Defence, Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade and the UN Refugee Agency.

emergency.lu is described as a platform created to re-establish communications following man-made or natural disasters to support the coordination efforts of humanitarian organisations in the field.

In the framework of the Connectivity for Refugees initiative, the deployment uses SES’ O3b mPOWER satellite network to provide dependable, high-speed internet for humanitarian teams and essential services for refugees.

This is described as the first emergency.lu deployment using O3b mPOWER satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO), an expansion beyond the programme’s previous use of geostationary (GEO) satellites for rapid disaster-response missions. SES says it also marks a new application for the platform.

While emergency.lu has traditionally supported first responders and emergency operations, this deployment is designed to connect refugees and the humanitarian organisations enabling services such as online learning, digital skills training and community connectivity centres as well as reliable day-to-day communications.

The deployment was carried out by the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Defence, Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade’s personnel on the ground, following hands-on training at SES’s Luxembourg headquarters. Built for sustained use and flexible expansion, the communication kit is designed to support longer-term operations and evolving needs on site.

By adding O3b mPOWER to the emergency.lu toolkit, says SES, the partnership strengthens its ability to provide connectivity beyond the first days of a crisis, supporting continued access to education, healthcare services and communications when displacement and humanitarian response extend for months.



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