Houston Astrodome's refugee city will be online in the next few hours. There are several telephony needs to meet.
Needed Now:
- Letting refugees call support services and family. This could be as simple as a bank of VoIP phone booths.
- Letting refugees receive calls in the stadium. More complicated, but doable.
Longer term.
- Pager or mobile phone service at the stadium. As services are committed, families found, you must be able to locate individuals among the thousands.
- Following refugees as they are relocated from the stadium. People in diaspora move across area codes and need numbers that follow the person, not the place. No roaming charges, please.
- Supporting volunteers and staff working in the disaster zones and in refugee service. You want to make them productive. And you want them to stay motivated; many will be away from home for long periods. Free connectivity, telephony, videophony, conferencing, etc.
Deeper needs.
- Forwarding calls made to sector phone numbers. Redirect calls to washed out home phones to new mobile or voip accounts. This provides business and home continuity amid a diaspora that has torn about homes, workplaces, schools. Crucial for personal and regional economic recovery.