DRASTIC - News

News



January 2nd, 2007: Asian Internet outage: DRASTIC unaffected. The Taiwan earthquake of December 26th, 2006 was measured at 7.1 by USGS and broke an undersea Internet cable. Widespread outages and disruptions of service were reported from Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and China. People using satellite services with egress onto the terrestrial Internet in this region would also have been disrupted. DRASTIC's Asian services make landfall in Germany and our customers were completely UNAFFECTED by this event.

December 1st, 2006: Content Filtering rolled out across network. Several customers have had issues with users accessing undesirable web content, but did not have the IT expertise to fix the problem. This resulted in excess bandwidth usage and often problems with viruses and other malware. DRASTIC have installed a filter at the egress point onto the Internet, conserving bandwidth and saving customers the problems that malware brings. Best of all, the service has been added free of charge.
August 26th, 2006: DRASTIC took part in Strong Angel III disaster response demonstration San Diego State University hosted the third in a series of demonstration exercises during which civilian and military personnel work together to test various communications technology and management systems in a simulated disaster deployment. Our blog of the experience is here. Our implementation went very smoothly and served well. The story was picked up in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune among others.
February 5th, 2006: ABC Superbowl show uses footage uploaded from Africa on DRASTIC VSAT system
	When ABC decided to do a human interest story for their Superbowl XL show, they had a problem. They were filming in Democratic Republic of Congo, where the wife and daughter of Seattle
Seahawks coach, Mike Holmgren, were on a medical outreach team. The problem: how to get the footage back to the US in time for the show. MAF were providing the air transport to the filming location and their I.T. Manager, John Gorenflo, offered to upload the footage over their DRASTIC VSAT system. With such short deadlines, DRASTIC were able to increase the bandwidth available to speed up transmission so that the show could go on. Click here to see the clip that was broadcast.

November 11th, 2005: First European VSAT Installers course held

Attendees at DRASTIC's first VSAT installer training course represented organizations working in Africa, Europe, and Central Asia. All completed a GVF accredited course held near London, with additional material on iDirect technology, power systems and wireless networking.

October 21st, 2005: Entry level bandwidth packages added.
DRASTIC has responded to requests for a lower cost bandwidth package to be introduced for smaller offices and those with very limited budgets. This 256kbps x 128 kbps 50:1 service costs from $295- 385/month, depending on location. Contact us for more information.

October 15th, 2005: New service switched on in Kinshasa.
The first DRASTIC customer in Africa came online today. This service replaces a previous VSAT service which was rated at 400kbps but rarely delivered more than 40kbps. The DRASTIC service delivers "ten times the speed for a third of the cost" according to our customer. Several more African sites are in the pipeline.

September 14th, 2005: Making the developing world a business opportunity, not just a Development project.
DRASTIC CEO, Rob Longhurst presented at the VSAT2005 conference in London this week. This was a great opportunity to communicate the importance of the developing world to the future of the VSAT industry. The presentation made the point that better cost:performance offerings will be necessary to create a replicable indigenous market in developing countries, but that huge potential exists. The presentation is available here.

September 12th, 2005: DRASTIC announce its chosen global network partner
After a research, design and selection process lasting over a year, DRASTIC announced its decision to source its global network from SDN Global, of Charlotte, North Carolina. "We approached several leading providers with a list of about 80 requirements," said DRASTIC CEO, Rob Longhurst. "SDN checked more boxes by some margin. They have a lot of empathy with what we are trying to do, and we are convinced that they will be excellent partners for us."

The Global network specified must be able to provide broadband service by satellite to most of the areas of the work where Relief and Development organizations work. DRASTIC aim to roll out about 5,000 VSAT equipped sites over the next five years.

One of the main criteria for service was a common, scalable and efficient technology platform. DRASTIC therefore specified iDirect technology.

September 2nd, 2005: DRASTIC respond to hurricane Katrina
Working closely with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), DRASTIC deployed two VSAT systems and equipment to run emergency communications centers in Louisiana and Mississippi in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

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