Good morning Chairman Inouye, Co-Chairman Stevens, and Members of the Committee.  My name is Matt Desch, and I am the Chairman and CEO of Iridium Satellite LLC.  Iridium played a vital role in providing emergency communications after Hurricane Katrina, and I am very grateful to be here today to talk to you about the state of the nation’s emergency communications network.  Nearly a year and a half has passed since the disaster wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but the images of those days in August and September of 2005 are not easily forgotten.  I want to applaud the Committee for its continuing efforts to ensure that the nation’s communications infrastructure is prepared before, during, and after disasters.   

            During Katrina, the effect of satellite communications was greatly enhanced by the swift actions of the Federal Communications Commission.  The FCC worked around-the-clock to ensure that providers had the resources available to assist in the recovery effort.  From assisting us in obtaining additional spectrum to facilitating customs entry of additional handsets, they worked in an efficient, cooperative, and professional manner.  I want to thank the Commission for these actions, and I believe that the development of the Homeland Security Bureau within the Commission is an important step toward ensuring more effective emergency communications in the future.

            Iridium’s network is uniquely suited to the communications needs of first responders and the military.  In fact, the Iridium’s system configuration is particularly effective in an emergency.  Our network includes more than 66 orbiting satellites, ensuring that every location in the U.S. and world, including both Hawaii and all of Alaska, is served by an Iridium satellite every minute of every day.  Iridium is the only communications system that has this universal coverage.  We also have significant ground facilities in both Hawaii and Alaska. 

            We are the primary mobile satellite telephone provider to the U.S. military and thousands of Iridium handsets are in use everyday by our soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen in Iraq and around the globe.  We also serve as the communications backbone for the nation’s tsunami warning system in the Pacific Ocean.  Iridium delivers essential services to users who need communications access to and from remote areas where no other form of communication is available, including in the air and at sea far from shore. 

            Through a satellite phone handset or small data device, a first responder is able to access our communications network that is positioned hundreds of miles above the planet, where it is always on and always ready.  Unlike any other network, Iridium’s system does not have to rely on vulnerable ground infrastructure to connect calls, which means that destruction of the terrestrial communications infrastructure will not render our system inoperable.  Iridium’s satellite phones require two things to complete a call:  (1) a charged battery; and (2) instruction similar to the instruction needed when you purchase a new phone or PDA.  Iridium is also interoperable with other communications devices such as land mobile radio through off-the-shelf technology.  And it is Iridium’s experiences with disaster communications that leads us to offer our wholehearted support of S. 385.

            Communications are the essential backbone of any disaster response system.  If our first responders, public safety personnel, and medical professionals cannot talk to one another over a functional, effective, and secure network when a disaster strikes, needless lives will be lost and needless destruction of property may occur.  Unfortunately, the very events that can so adversely affect our communities—whether they be natural or man-made, hurricanes or floods, or bombs or bullets—also often disrupt the basic infrastructure with which we communicate.  The present emergency communications system for the nation is remains vulnerable, even as its limitations were revealed both by the September 11th attacks and by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.  Major strides have been made in the last year and a half, but the challenge for the future is to provide our first responders with both a redundant and an interoperable emergency communications network that is available when they need it, where they need it.  By taking steps to ensure that first responders have the proper communications equipment ready for a disaster, this Committee can also spur business adoption of appropriate backup emergency communications equipment.

            S. 385, the Interoperable Emergency Communications Act introduced by you Mr. Chairman with the support of the Co-Chairman and Senators Kerry, Smith, and Snowe, is a needed and necessary step toward this goal.  Iridium is proud to give this bill its support.  This bill embraces two lessons learned from our nation’s recent disasters that will dramatically strengthen the national emergency communications system:  (1) the need to create strategic communications reserves in various locations around the nation so that communications equipment is pre-positioned and ready for use when a disaster strikes; and (2) the need to explore the creation of a national emergency communications backup system for the nation, including an evaluation of the use of a non-terrestrial, satellite-based communications component for that backup system (which Iridium believes should be a significant component of such backup system).  This Committee should act quickly to report S. 385.  Doing so will address two of the most obvious problems with the country’s emergency communications capabilities.

            Satellite communications networks were often the only communications network available to first responders in the Gulf Coast region in the days immediately following the destructive hurricanes of 2005.  Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed most of the terrestrial communications systems used throughout the Gulf Coast.  Telephone wires simply vanished, and wireless towers had to have extensive repairs when the storms had passed before they were fully-functional.  Even temporary communications solutions such as fixed-line phones on vehicular platforms, trucked-in cell towers, and hastily-wired emergency shelters took days and sometimes weeks to deploy.  But there was never enough equipment for all effected communities, even when these stop-gap measures became available.  Iridium and other providers stripped their stocks bare to send equipment to the Gulf Coast, bringing it in from around the globe.  Even so, mobile satellite providers had to turn down requests for equipment from public safety organizations, and give other public safety organizations, including the House Sergeant-at-Arms office, less equipment than they requested.  The lack of available communications equipment pre-positioned in the Gulf Coast region hampered relief efforts and made the communications problems in the region worse than they should have been.

            Beyond that, a core problem in the emergency communications in the Gulf Coast was the lack of an integrated emergency communications plan that embraced satellite communications.  As the Chairman of the FCC informed this Committee less than a month after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, “[i]f we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, it is that we cannot rely solely on terrestrial communications.  When radio towers are knocked down, satellite communications are, in some instances, the most effective means of communicating.”  In the midst of this catastrophe, emergency personnel came to rely on satellite phones and other non-terrestrial services for their vital communications needs.  The reason for that reliance was clear—more and more first responders found that satellite provided voice and data access when other networks simply could not.  In fact Sulfur, Louisiana’s firefighters had constant contact with their headquarters through their Iridium handsets, even while standing in the knee-deep waters of New Orleans.

            What worked in the Gulf Coast immediately after the hurricanes was satellite, which became a vital communications link that first responders found necessary as they went about saving lives.  Satellites provided the redundancy, ubiquity, and resiliency that were unavailable from land-based networks.  The National Guard, the Red Cross, utility workers, search and rescue officials, and even local phone companies turned to mobile satellite phones and terminals in the minutes, hours, and days after the Hurricane struck.  For example:

            Today, the private sector is working with Iridium to provide a more permanent emergency communications capability for their operations.  And that capability is reliant upon the redundancy and effectiveness of satellite communications.  Two current Iridium projects illustrate this fact:

            The move to satellite communications equipment for emergency situations makes perfect sense—widespread and catastrophic damage on the ground, or the remoteness of a particular location, simply does not impact a satellite communications network located in space.  No matter where disaster occurs, mobile satellite communications equipment can be immediately available for critical communications needs.  Satellite communications systems also offer first responders and public safety personnel the interoperability they so desperately need.  The satellite industry is already offering interoperable communications options to first responders. 

            Satellite communications, and in particular satellite phones, have proven their value in an emergency.  Where they are available and used as part of an integrated emergency communications plan, they provide first responders with an effective and redundant communications capability from the moment a disaster strikes.  No matter the damage on the ground from a disaster, including flooding, earthquakes, tornados, and man-made catastrophes, first responders can go about their duties with the knowledge that they will have all the information they need provided through a satellite communications system.  Unfortunately, the current lack of readily-available satellite communications equipment and the lack of an integrated plan for their deployment and use continue to hamper the nation’s emergency communications system.

            The realization that the American communications system was not ready for a disaster was never more evident than on September 11th, when stories surfaced about the lack of interoperable equipment available to the heroes who responded to the catastrophe at the World Trade Center.  Hurricane Katrina reinforced that realization 4 years later, revealing not only that the American emergency communications system lacked interoperability but that it also lacked redundancy.  Now, over a year after the Gulf Coast disaster, the challenge of establishing a truly effective national emergency communications system still confronts us.  S. 385 embraces that challenge.

            No matter how successful any particular emergency communications system is, if it is not in the hands of first responders or ready in times of need, it will never be as effective as it could be.  The key for the nation is to, in the immortal words of the Boy Scouts, “Be Prepared.”  Iridium, like other communications companies, stands ready to answer the call in an emergency.  When Hurricane Katrina struck, Iridium personnel worked overtime to get Iridium phones into the hands of those first responders who lacked operable communications equipment.  But these efforts were hampered by the same infrastructure destruction that made other communications systems inoperable and the need to transport equipment across the nation to the disaster area. 

            The efforts were also hampered by the economic reality that in times of emergency, there is never a large enough stock of equipment to get it in the hands of everyone that needs it.  A strategic communications reserve that provides for advanced placement of communications equipment is a necessary step in the development of a national emergency communications plan.  The grants established in S. 385, which provide for up to $100 million total for strategic placement of communications equipment across the nation, will make available the funds necessary to make sure that communications equipment is ready and available when needed where needed.

            The basic reality of the present national emergency communications system, however, is that it is over-reliant on terrestrial systems, the same systems that were proven fallible along the Gulf Coast.  This is not an issue of equipment availability or even interoperability; it is an issue of redundancy and effectiveness.  That is why Iridium supports the measures outlined in S. 385 to study the development of a national emergency communications backup system.  We also thank the Chairman and the Co-Chairman, and the other co-sponsors of the bill, for including satellite communications systems in the study of that backup system.  For it is satellite communications that offers the best chance of creating a “resilient interoperable communications system for first responders.”  It is beyond time for the nation to consider creating a national emergency communications backup system.  And Iridium is committed to assisting that study in any way possible.

            The federal government can also implement additional steps to strengthen the state of the nation’s emergency communications system.  Iridium would like to see the federal government expand the grant program created last year which gave money to hospitals in the Gulf Coast states to purchase satellite communications equipment for use during emergencies.  This program will bring vitally-needed communications equipment to these hospitals, but there is no reason to limit the program to the Gulf Coast.  Other hospitals need these communications links for the times when other communications alternatives may not be available.  Having this equipment could literally be the difference between life and death.

            The federal government’s own communications networks are also in dire need of a backup system.  The communications network for Capitol Hill and in federal government buildings around the nation is almost exclusively reliant on terrestrial communications systems.  If a disaster on the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina every struck Washington, D.C., the federal government could very well be without basic voice and data communications in the minutes, hours, and days immediately following the disaster because the local terrestrial communications infrastructure has been destroyed.  Iridium believes that the Committee should consider the development of a non-terrestrial emergency communications backup system for federal buildings.  Much like the MedStar system, an emergency backup based on satellite communications would provide the federal government with the safety and security of knowing that communications would be available in a time of need.

            Finally, training is a vital component of any emergency communications system.  It is not enough to simply give a first responder a satellite phone, or any other communications device, and tell them to “go to your job.”  Modern emergency communications systems are so much more than a means of voice communication.  For instance, the real-time data transmission available over the Iridium system can put a host of information at the hands of a first responder, particularly if they are deployed to areas they are not already familiar with or into situations that are continually in flux.  We need to make sure that first responders understand the immense capabilities of the equipment that they are given and can incorporate and use those capabilities when they are in emergency situations.  The federal government should make money available to public safety agencies to ensure that they are adequately trained to use their emergency communications equipment as an integrated part of their response protocol.

            I would like to thank this Committee for its efforts toward creating a more robust emergency communications network for the nation.  As we have seen time and time again, effective emergency communications is essential during a disaster.  This Committee has made emergency communications a priority, and bills like S. 385 will begin to shape the type of emergency communications system that will be available to our first responders when even the most devastating natural or man-made disaster confronts us.  Strategic deployment of communications equipment will ensure that equipment is ready the minute disaster strikes.  And a national emergency communications backup system, particularly one that contains a non-terrestrial component, will provide first responders with the redundant communications systems they need to do their job efficiently and effectively.

            I can assure the Committee that each Iridium employee takes seriously the vital role that we play as the piece of the nation’s communications infrastructure that never goes down.  To that end, we continue to add functionality based on the lessons learned from each disaster recovery operation and on the recommendations of public safety personnel.  We also continue to work with the FCC to ensure that we have the necessary spectrum to expand and improve our system.  Our nation’s emergency communications system is getting better, but we have not yet embraced all of the lessons learned from America’s recent disasters.  We can all do more to assist our first responders, and Iridium, with its satellite phones and communications network, stands poised to aid in any way necessary.  Thank you again for letting me testify before you today, and I will be happy to answer any questions you might have.