FEMA taps AT&T and Verizon Wireless for emergency communications providers
By Will Park on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 2:41 PM PST In AT&T, Announcements, Financial/Corporate News, Partnerships, Verizon
It sure is good to see the federal-response agency nightmare we call the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) doing something to actually prepare for an emergency. You know, instead of waiting until an emergency hits and then scrambling to figure out how to get water to catastrophe victims.
With the new Obama administration cleaning up the mind-boggling mistakes made by the Bush team, it seems FEMA is gearing up to ensure that emergency first-responders have adequate lines of communications during and after a disaster. FEMA recently took bids from the wireless telecoms industry for contracts to supply the federal response agency with the hardware and infrastructure necessary to maintain a working communications network in the most trying of times.
RCR Wireless reports that FEMA accepted bids from AT&T (NYSE: T) Mobility and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless to help the agency, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, in coordinating disaster relief efforts. AT&T has been tapped to provide the wireless and WiFi services that FEMA will use in their daily operations. Verizon will be providing infrastructure and hardware for emergency communications, with Strata Technologies handling satellite communications.
All wireless carriers are signed up to work with FEMA on a one-year contract, with four possible one-year contract extension options at FEMA’s discretion.
The new FEMA administration is seemingly taking a proactive approach that may just result in faster response times and more coordinated response efforts. “This is an example of the new FEMA,” said Rex Whitacre, the agency’s acting deputy CIO.
[Via: PhoneScoop]
At the risk of sounding rude – stick to what you know and don’t gratuitously insult the hundreds of very dedicated professionals who work their @$$es off daily at FEMA. I happen to be one them and your snarky, smart-@$$ comments about FEMA make me wonder why I put in 12+ hours a day. You clearly have a better grasp of emergency preparedness, so maybe we should just leave it to tech blogger next time?
@joel FEMA is a joke in its current state, and none of it was the bush admin. fault. FEMA was a disaster before the bush admin. Oh and i know my crap because me, my dad, two friends and their dad are all firefighters. But i have to agree, a tech journalist should keep his political opinions (as wrong and dumb as they are) out of his articles. The obama admin has already F###ed up almost as much as the bush admin. and it hasn’t even been 2 months.
You really did not have to get political about this. This deal has been in the works for a long time. You should resist the temptation to show your bias when it is irrelevant.