Emergency Telecoms for Ukraine (CityLink etc)
Communications infrastructure is often targeted during military incursions to limit the coordination effectiveness of defenders as is the case today in many resisting cities in the frontline and this severely hampers the effectiveness of emergency services.
The technology to deploy low cost, highly resilient and portable 4G and WiFi Mesh networks to mitigate those losses has reached price and reliability levels which fully justify their deployment in the Ukrainian invasion context.
The several StarLink satellite internet terminals already donated by SpaceX have a very short WiFi range of <100m which can be augmented to up to 3kms with the proposed architectures.The architecture is a WiFi Mesh solution in which the Starlink terminal is connected to a central unit which distributes the signal to 16 WiFi repeaters significantly increasing the covered area for anyone accredited to access the SSID with a phone or computer.
There is an alternative architecture described in a companion power point presentation which costs significantly more but covers up to a 3kms radius using custom SIM cards to be provided to Emergency Services in areas without any other connectivity. It would be feasible to establish roaming agreements with Ukrainian operators at a later stage to allow their customers to use these services as well without swapping SIM cards.
Several regions are going dark in unpredictable patterns depending on facilities attacked and we aim at having a rapid response to get them back online again via Starlink connections.
Hospitals are particularly critical and should have these solutions available as a backup solution even if currently connected because in the frontline this could change quickly.
Fundraising USD5'000 per WiFi solution (one per hospital site)