Emergency Services Turn to 3CX VoIP Phone System after Hurricane Strikes
What would you do if there was a natural disaster in your area that knocked out the power and phone lines? 3CX Premium Partner, Charles Ambrosecchia of SigmaVoIP wasn't content with just sitting and waiting for the power and phone service to come back online.
After a hurricane hit the northeastern region of the USA in October 2011, Charles wanted to help out his local community in the Greater Danbury and Redding, Connecticut, area. Having originally turned his SUV into a mobile demonstration tool for 3CX Phone System, Charles saw the opportunity to use it as a 3CX mobile emergency telecommunications command center.
Charles placed the "3CXMobile" at a location that provided four different hotspots whilst one of the servers got SigmaVoIP back online - employees could work from home as they were connected to the work VPN which meant business carried on as normal. He then went from one shelter to another, helping people to contact friends and family members.
3CX Phone System Assists Emergency Services
Even the police turned to Charles, placing their emergency center next to the 3CXMobile as their communications were down. Charles ran a cable off one of the GXW 4024's and gave the police a phone service which included extensions with DIDs.
Charles quickly sped over to the local shelter, where hundreds of people had gathered. The shelter had lost its phone service as pretty much every communications tower was down. Charles was able to setup 20 lines to their main phone system and 15 analog phones. With these new connections up and running, most people were able to call their loved ones. This was only possible because of 3CX's advanced features enabling offloading of the RTP (audio traffic) and the ability to offer instant provisioning of all endpoints, including Android and iPhone smartphones, over the WiFi service that was provided from the vehicle.
Charles left a GXW 4024 with a WiFi bridge to keep the system on the hotspot network and registered against the mobile 3CX setup, and moved on to the next shelter area.
Mobile 3CX Command Center Setup
The 3CX Command Center was set up using the following hardware:
- 3 - Supermicro Superserver with Quad core Xeon and 64GB Ram (Dedicated 3CX Servers)
- 1 - Atom D525 SigmaVoIP SB server (Small 3CX Server and Skype Gateway)
- 1 - 24 port Managed LG/Nortel 10/100/1000 switch with enhanced QoS
- 1 - GXW4004
- 1 - GXW4008
- 3 - Buffalo High Power radio routers with DDWRT firmware (2 operating as WiFi clients (Cablevision and AT&T) and the third customizable as needed, + 10db gain omnidirectional antenna
- 1 - Routerboard/MikroTik 450G
- 1 - 1500W inverter
"This is an example of how 3CX is the leading provider of VoIP platforms thanks to exclusive features, open architecture, ease of provisioning, flexibility and availability over any medium. SigmaVoIP's staff was able to provision everything on the fly using Android powered tablets (also equipped with 3CXPhone for Android for ease of communication). `Powerful, easy and incredibly flexible' best describes 3CX even under the most challenging conditions where no other solution would have come close to working," said Charles Ambrosecchia, CEO of SigmaVoIP.
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