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Connecting Micro Games athletes to home
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Posted on May 03 2006
SaipanCell Communications, the official telecommunications carrier for the 6th Micronesian Games, will provide push-to-talk phones to participating delegations in the quadrennial sporting event set from June 23 to July 2 here on Saipan.
Carrier relations senior manager Veni Folta said the company would also provide units of SaipanCell’s portable cellular phones.
She said this would be the company’s service not only to the CNMI community but also to the entire Micronesian region, “so that the athletes from surrounding islands could connect with their families back home.”
This way, she added, athletes will be able to provide updates to their families about their progress during the Games. “To help people to stay in touch,” she added.
Folta, together with chief operating officer Michael G. Domigan, corporate sales manager Jianshen Huang, and customer service manager Pauline Johnson, held a brief donation ceremony to Micronesian Games Organizing Committee finance chairman Rex Palacios yesterday morning at the SaipanCell office in Gualo Rai.
Palacios received a check donation worth $5,000 adding to the $20,000 of in-kind donations from the telecommunications group. Palacios thanked the management of SaipanCell for their assistance.
The Micro Games finance chair said the special portable cellular phones, which seemed like a landline but wireless, would be a cheaper way for the athletes to connect to their home islands.
Huang added that aside from the cellular units, SaipanCell would also be giving away at least 3,000 bottled water during the event.
Palacios said the Micronesian Games committee is very pleased to work with SaipanCell. He assured the group that the committee would give due recognition to them unlike in 1969, when it was first held in the CNMI, when there was no recognition of any sort for sponsors.
SaipanCell would also be releasing a limited edition commemorative Micro Games long distance cards soon.
Saipan is expecting between 1,200 to 1,500 athletes and officials from the CNMI, Guam, Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Palau, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, and Yap to participate in the Games.
