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Severe Weather Events Will Increase Demand for "On the Pause" Networks

By Karl Horne, VP of Cloud and Digital Solutions at SES

Severe weather can present a wide range of challenges for first responders, and the frequency of these events is increasing. So far in 2023, the U.S. has experienced 24 weather and climate disasters with a minimum of $1 billion in damages. This number is almost three times higher than the yearly average. And natural disasters caused more than 3 million people in the U.S. to leave their homes in 2022.

Looking around the world, the deadliest global weather event of 2023 to date was Mediterranean Storm Daniel, which brought heavy rains to Libya's northeast. Other major 2023 worldwide events included Hurricane Otis in Mexico, the Morocco Earthquake, and unprecedented flooding in China from monsoon season, typhoons and intense rainfall.

One of the key challenges for first responders in providing help during natural disasters is establishing communications. Storms and other events can disrupt or even destroy cable plants, cell towers or other equipment used in normal day-to-day communications. When communications systems go offline, they can delay mission-critical recovery efforts and prevent governments and other relief organizations from working together effectively.

Fortunately, technology has evolved to help first responder agencies get re-connected, using satellites, specialized mobile-emergency response trucks, and hardened, weather resistant mobile equipment that can be set up quickly, "on-the-pause" and deployed temporarily to aid in recovery efforts. Beyond just basic broadband, these rapid, on-demand temporary networks can enable local edge cloud services, private 5G bubbles, and other applications. The end result is high-performance connectivity for person-to-person or site-to-headquarters connectivity, as well as push-to-talk, video and wearables for first responders. And these satellite-driven networks can work for days, weeks or even months, until regular communications systems can be restored.

With surface temperatures expected to increase over time, many weather and climate experts predict a continued rise in weather events in 2024 and beyond. Along with this, I predict that in 2024 we will see a global increase in demand for "on-the-pause" temporary networks to aid first responders in their recovery efforts. These networks will become more widely available as more satellite systems are deployed around the world, and they will become more sophisticated in the range of services that they offer. And both telecommunications providers and local governments will become more familiar with these networks and their capabilities, making them a more mainstream capability in their overall toolkit for disaster recovery. Cloud providers will also look to use on-the-pause networks more frequently in the future, since cloud services are playing a larger role in disaster recovery efforts and first responder communications. In all, delivering low-latency, cloud-based applications quickly after a weather event will accelerate recovery work and make first responders more efficient and effective.

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