The right communication at the right time is most important when the time is bad. One of Bitnetix's clients, we'll call him John, served a US Army tour of duty in Haiti, where he and his wife went on to establish a day school and orphanage for over 200 children in the Port-Au-Prince area. When the January 12, 2010, earthquake struck, John and his family were halfway through the process of adopting one of the children there.
When John heard the news about the earthquake, he was devastated. Unable to get reliable information, unable to reach his friends or ex-Army buddies who lived in the area, and unable to know the fate of the children and staff, he feared the worse. Normal cell phone and land line communications to the area were next to impossible. The uncertainty of the situation on the ground and the inability to communicate were taking their toll on John.
Luckily, Bitnetix had installed a new Voice Over IP phone system at John’s company just the week before. John was planning on using existing land lines for his office phone connections, as they had a contract that would last for another six months. On the morning after the earthquake, Bitnetix was at John's office to do some final work on the system. Upon learning of the personal connection that John had to the tragedy, we immediately offered to help.
Reconfiguring John’s phone system to make use of Bitnetix’s VOIP platform for outbound international dialing only took a few minutes. The result could not have been more timely. Bitnetix was able to assist John and his family in communicating with cell phones in Haiti by bypassing the normal public telephone network and using Internet-based providers that could route VOIP traffic through alternate means. By lunchtime on the day after the earthquake, John was in contact with people at the school and orphanage in Haiti over Bitnetix's VOIP network. Though the scope of the damage and the complete situation was not yet fully known, at least there was the right communication.
Bitnetix is proud to have been able to directly and immediately assist one of our clients and one of our friends in this devastating tragedy that had such personal and direct impact. VOIP technology is not simply about saving a few dollars on a phone bill or having a phone on your desk that can display news headlines. It is about empowering people to connect in ways that were not possible before. It is about always having the right communication at the right time. Even in the wake of a disaster that killed tens of thousands of people and left about a million people homeless.
In the days and weeks following, John and his wife learned that his some of his friends and Army buddies perished in the quake and its aftermath. At the orphanage and school, 40 children died as well. Despite the odds, one of the surviving children was their soon-to-be new son. In late January, John and his wife arranged a trip to Florida where they were united with him a year and a half ahead of schedule and against all hope. Today, he is a special part of their loving family and they are all living happily in the Rochester area.
Bitnetix is The Business of Communication.