Right now, Queensland and New South Wales are getting smashed with unprecedented rains, causing widespread floods. These aren’t the kind of floods that mean roads are cut off and you need to find an alternate route, these floods are so severe that towns like Lismore, with a population of more than 40,000 residents, see almost every business and home get inundated.
With so much water around, communication outages have been common and widespread, with the water blocking many providers from accessing locations to repair.
While there are many pitching in to help with evacuations and the inevitable cleanup and rebuild efforts, one Aussie company is pitching in to help restore internet services.
NetVault is a specialist telecommunications services provider focusing on three key areas for businesses: internet, telephony, and cloud.
The champions at NetVault have sprung into action and donated a number of SpaceX Starlink terminals to provide free internet access for flood-affected people in locations like Brisbane, Lismore, Byron Bay.
I think many of us have had times where the internet has gone out and it feels like your left arm is cut off, but to have just lost everything in your home or business, but then not to be able to communicate with loved ones, would make the experience all the more difficult.
For those unfamiliar with Starlink, it’s a satellite internet service by SpaceX and with little more than a dish (aka terminal), a router (included), power, and a clear view of the sky, you can connect to a growing array of low-earth orbit satellites shot to space by Elon Musk. The great thing about Starlink, is that speeds are regularly between 200-300Mbps down, which means many people could connect their phones, laptop etc to the one wifi hotspot and still have great speeds.
This matrix of satellites is quickly growing to cover the globe and terminals were also recently provided to locations in Ukraine to ensure they have comms during their most critical time of need.
These terminals aren’t cheap either, you’ll pay just over $800 for the hardware (Starlink dish, wifi router, power supply, cables and mounting tripod). Then you’ll pay A$139pm, so if they’ve provided 10-15 of these things and are covering the monthly cost, this is a decent financial undertaking for them.
I’ve never met anyone from NetVault, never used any of their services, but if they’re willing to go out of their way to help, go ahead and give them a follow. Thanks for helping legends!
