District Court goes high tech, acquires satellite Internet trailer

The U.S. District Court for the NMI’s newly acquired satellite Internet trailer undergoes final testing yesterday at the Fishing Base in Garapan. The federal court purchased the equipment due to last year’s communication blackout in the CNMI followed by Typhoon Soudelor’s destruction of electrical infrastructure on Saipan. (Ferdie de la Torre)

Learning from last year’s communication blackout that left the CNMI “disconnected” from the outside world, the U.S. District Court for the NMI has acquired a satellite Internet trailer.

Federal court staff, with the assistance of Keith Bosarge of the AT&T Vanguard Services that designs the trailer and the systems, completed yesterday the final test of the high tech communication equipment at the Fishing Base in Garapan.

“It was great. We got a better signal here [Fishing Base] than we got behind the Horiguchi Building,” said U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Deputy Clerk William J. Bezzant in an interview.

Bezzant said the satellite Internet trailer, which just arrived on the island from the U.S. mainland a week ago, will be utilized for their program called continuity of operations (COOP) during a disaster.

Bezzant said the trailer can be deployed out at the Fishing Base or away from any building.

He said satellite Internet trailer doesn’t need external power or anything.

“It just needs a place where you can see a satellite up in the sky. And it got its own onboard generator. All its electronics are onboard,” he said.

Bezzant said they will just press the button, start up the generator, and it automatically lifts up the satellite dish, aims it automatically at the satellite, and finds the satellite.

The trailer has a capacity of a two-week fuel supply.

“What we have at presently is two megabit per second download speed, one megabit per second upload speed,” he said.

Bezzant said the reason for acquiring this trailer is because one year ago yesterday, Saipan was in a communication blackout.

“We couldn’t connect with the outside world. We couldn’t conduct court business. We couldn’t even tell the world that we are still alive,” he said.

Bezzant said the island then had no banking system, which was frozen and collapsed temporarily.

He recalled that the hotels, the courts, and the airlines couldn’t do business.

“People couldn’t withdraw even $20 out of their bank account to feed their family because the ATM didn’t work. The banks couldn’t work until they eventually found some way to sort of communicate with Guam,” Bezzant said.

The communication blackout, he said, was followed closely with Typhoon Soudelor that destroyed the electrical infrastructure on the island.

He said the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. couldn’t generate electricity for sometime under Typhoon Soudelor.

Bezzant said this area also has a history of earthquakes and other kinds of natural disaster.

Bezzant said the U.S. courts were good enough to acquire this satellite communications trailer and send it out here.

So in the event of a disaster, Bezzant said, in a course of a few minutes or less than an hour, they could hook this thing up to a car and tow it to a just any open area where they can see the sky for the satellite.

“Unlock it, press the button, start up the generator, lift the satellite dish, connect to the satellite, and in less than an hour, if we are in a hurry in 30 minutes, we could have telephone, voiceover Internet, and telephone service,” he said.

Bezzant said they will be able to connect up to all other servers, and be able to conduct court business, probation office business, and the marshal office.

He added that they will also be able to support the emergency responders with communication service, data and voice communications.

“So we are very happy to have this emergency response capability,” Bezzant said.

Bezzant said the satellite Internet trailer, which costs around $300,000, will be shared between the NMI and Guam District Courts back and forth during disasters.

Bezzant said it’s pricey but it’s highly effective.

“As you also saw a year ago from now what total economic collapse looks like. It’s not pretty. And so really it’s expensive but is something necessary for disaster recovery,” he said.

Bezzant said the equipment will support the District Court, Probation Office, The Marshal Service Office, and to support other federal agencies on the island and other emergency responders.

Keith Bosarge said their company, AT&T Vanguard Services, is based in Redmond, Washington.

“This is a third generation of our emergency communications trailer,” the AT&T professional network design engineer said.

Bosarge said the trailer provides communications with a touch of a button when there is no infrastructure anywhere.

“We can get you online and working in a matter of minutes,” he said.

Bosarge said this is a lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

He said they built several mobile units on trailers designed to get communications backlog.

“And so this is the product we have now,” he added.