Kacific’s COVID-19 response has been recognized as the Satellite Project of the Year at the Global Carrier Awards 2021, where it was described as the most ingenious and visionary project in the satellite space
FREMONT, CA: When the COVID-19 outbreak caught the globe by surprise, medical care and information sharing were critical in combating the virus's spread and impact. Many rural areas in the Pacific, on the other hand, had little or no access to their major cities. To close this gap, Kacific launched a large-scale Community WiFi project to bring high-quality, low-cost satellite broadband to rural health clinics using inexpensive, easy-to-install antennas. Kacific's high-throughput satellite, Kacific1, provided capacity for the project, which uses spot beam technology to cover inhabited areas in 25 countries.
Kacific received a grant from the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) Technical Assistance in collaboration with GuarantCo to fund the terminals and support governments and communities throughout Asia and the Pacific in their battle against the pandemic.
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Around 200 terminals have been deployed since then in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the Philippines, bringing fast, affordable broadband to health clinics, schools, and communities all over the world. They link clinics, schools, and government facilities to prevent, monitor, and control the spread of infectious Covid-19 clusters in rural areas, as well as teach local medical practitioners to deal with local viral epidemics.
Medical practitioners in remote places have been able to coordinate with nationwide COVID-19 health responses, plan emergency evacuations, and contact city-based specialists owing to Kacific's service. The connected clinics were able to save more lives, particularly in life-or-death situations. In addition, health clinic internet connections served as community hubs for disaster response communications.
Up to 1,000 rural health posts, clinics, community centres, and schools across the Asia Pacific will receive free 30GB of data as part of the experiment, with the first sites receiving three months of free bandwidth. Each terminal comes with a prepaid data subscription called Community WiFi, which allows the local community to connect using voucher cards.
