DUBAI, 25 March 2003 — Communication networks serving the Middle East are under serious stress with the influx of military, media and aid agencies from around the world.
The media in Qatar and Bahrain have taken over hotel floors, hotel business centers and lobbies for the last three months and they plan to continue to use them for the foreseeable future.
While reporters and correspondents are in the field or on board US Navy ships, technical teams are running the ground satellite networks; hotels have been turned into broadcast stations, transmitting to Atlanta, London, Australia, Canada and other locations.
ABC, CBS and CNN have ground satellite networks based in hotels, run by ABC networking and engineers.
As a back up for the operation, engineering teams from CNN and CBS are in Manama to extend hands-on training for producers and reporters using mobile telecoms equipment from the field.
In Doha, CNN has its own uplink whereas CBS and ABC are sharing the same one. Reuters, in both Manama and Doha, are using their own offices in the country for their communications.
Land based reporters in Manama, such as ABC, CBS and CNN, have vehicles that take them to the borders on a daily basis and are equipped with CapSat Messenger.
CapSat is used on the land vehicles and shared by the various networks stationed in Manama. It allows them to get pictures and data files back to either the base station at the hotel or directly to their headquarters.
With the increased demand for bandwidth, on March 18, Inmarsat re-tasked its backup satellite, establishing a 5th Ocean Region — Indian Ocean Region West (IND-W) — to meet predicted take-up of Global Area Network (GAN) Mobile ISDN services. Videophone via Inmarsat GAN was used extensively during the Afghanistan conflict, and has also been used during many major natural disasters to co-ordinate safety issues and services.
“Inmarsat is about providing businesses with global communications services, irrespective of the constraints of the terrestrial network,” said Michael Butler, managing director, Inmarsat Ltd.
“By establishing a 5th Ocean Region we are confident that we can meet the growing demand for our services in this region by the world media and aid agencies.”
Where four of Inmarsat’s nine geosatellites provided the on demand high-data rate services on a near global basis for Inmarsat GAN, the other five satellites together acted as in-orbit spares, while also providing a global leasing network for certain Inmarsat services.
The addition of the fifth satellite to the main fleet, a latest generation Inmarsat 3 satellite, ensures Inmarsat provides continuous communications services to its customers in the Middle East.
“GAN enables you to cover stories the way you’ve never been able to before.” Becky Diamond, a CNN producer and correspondent.
Paul Unger, CNN field engineer continued, “You can do this at 64 kbps with one 7E communication device or you can get 128kbps if you multiplex the devices.”
Global news audiences are becoming more familiar with GAN. Frequently, TV viewers see a small message coming up on top of screens in many reports saying “via video phone.” This is a small piece of equipment, about the size of a schoolchild’s lunchbox, which streams video over the portable Inmarsat Global Area Network (GAN) satellite terminal.
Recently, Middle East Broadcasting, a leading Arabic language television broadcaster, upgraded its Inmarsat GAN Global Area Network (GAN) portfolio to 17 terminals, supporting the launch of the station’s new Al-Arabiya 24-hour Arabic news channel.
The war in Iraq is being covered not only on land, but also at sea. Communications requirements at sea are extremely challenging. Becky Diamond filed the first live picture from the USS Lincoln on March 20.
Diamond’s link to her with Inmarsat’s Fleet 77, allowed her to be the first to bring the live footage to the world.
Along with Fleet 77, other embedded media crew based on ships have found Inmarsat B to be a quick method of communicating with their headquarters. “This is what I am using to file my stories from sea. We are able to access the Internet to file stories and share information at virtually any time thanks to Inmarsat maritime services,” said Abu Dhabi TV journalist Abdullah Saafin, writing via Internet Chat from a US Navy ship on patrol in the Gulf.
“I can stay in touch with the station and keep updated with every move in the region, as well as contribute to our pool of knowledge. This means that the news station stays totally up to date.
“If something happens at the UN, we are aware of it and can then reflect this information in the approach we are taking out here at sea.
“The result is that we are more informed with more up-to-date resources, and we can support a better quality of informed journalism.”