SatMagazine (SM)
Over the years, you and your company, NewCom International, have been recognized within and outside of the SATCOM industry for your work in leveraging satellite connectivity to improve lives in developing regions throughout Latin America. Can you share your personal and business philosophy behind this core company focus?
Jaime Dickinson
It’s personal to me because I was born in Peru and have seen the country’s needs firsthand. I want to help people living in remote regions throughout Latin America and other remote corners of the world to have access to a quality education, health care and the same opportunities that we enjoy in the United States. From a business perspective, we know that connectivity—and the voice, data, video, content and security solutions that come with it—has a direct impact on economic growth and development and connectivity is the key for all.
SM
Education seems to be at the forefront of NewCom’s efforts in Latin America. Why is NewCom putting so much emphasis on bringing Internet connectivity and educational content to schools?
Jaime Dickinson
At NewCom, we believe that education is the key to advancing a country—both in terms of improving quality of life and driving innovation and economic growth. Education transforms lives and ensures that children have the chance to pursue their dreams and compete in today’s global economy, and Internet connectivity opens the door to it all.
Education is also a top priority for many government agencies and NGOs throughout Latin America. The issue has been figuring out how to deliver quality, affordable education to remote, hard-to-access schools. This is where satellite communications technology and our turnkey educational platform come into play.
SM
Can you tell us about your education platform and how you are using it?
Jaime Dickinson
Our Education Anywhere™ Platform is an affordable, turnkey solution that enables governments and NGOs to deliver seamless connectivity, interactive videoconferencing services and much needed educational content to remote classrooms throughout the world.
We developed this solution because many of the NGOs and government agencies we partner with are starting from scratch and need a complete education solution that goes far beyond Internet connectivity. Our education platform includes affordable satellite-based Wi-Fi connectivity; firewall and web filtering functionality to block inappropriate content, government-approved bilingual English/Spanish educational content for grades k-12, and cloud-based pre-caching of the most-used educational content.
Education Anywhere™ also includes automatic off-hours content updates, online measurement tools and video conferencing capabilities. Our platform has been implemented in more than 100 remote schools throughout Colombia and has been a huge success. We are currently piloting this service at a primary school in Mexico’s Puebla region and hope to duplicate the program in schools throughout the region over the
next year.
In some situations, we just focus on providing high-quality Internet as we are currently doing with a school servicing the indigenous Q’eros Nation tribe living high in the Andres of Peru. As is the case with many of the schools we service, getting our equipment to the village was quite a feat.
The installation involved trekking a satellite dish up steep mountain trails to an elevation of more than 16,000 feet and installing a solar panel to generate the necessary electricity, both of which were facilitated by our project partner, Kidnected World.
SM
Tell us about some of other social advancement initiatives NewCom is spearheading throughout Latin America.
Jaime Dickinson
We are currently teaming with local organizations, NGOs and government agencies throughout Latin America to improve the lives of the residents there. In Panama, for example, we have partnered with Digicel to deliver high-quality, low-cost satellite communications services to 57 community centers throughout the country—providing free public Internet access.
In Guatemala, we’ve been partnering with COMNET, the largest VSAT provider in the country, to provide satellite-based connectivity and high-speed Internet services to 117 schools, medical clinics and community centers. Another example is our work with the Red Cross.
We are currently providing a private satellite network for Internet access to facilitate the ongoing Red Cross humanitarian mission at Guantanamo—including communication between field workers and headquarters in Switzerland and Washington D.C.
SM
Driving economic growth in these developing regions is also a key mandate for NewCom. Can you tell us how you are working to achieve this?
Jaime Dickinson
At NewCom, we are more than a global satellite and terrestrial communications provider. We are also an engineering firm that specializes in the design, implementation, operation and management of critical integrated voice, video, data, content and security solutions for government agencies, financial institutions, oil & mining companies, the maritime industry, ISPs, airports, broadcasters and other business sectors.
Promoting economic growth starts with providing the critical communications and security solutions companies need to operate in remote corners of Latin America. To address this, we developed our Office Without Borders™ platform, a compact turnkey unit that provides instant voice, video, data and content services anytime, anywhere.
This turnkey remote office system, along with our monitoring and Autonomous Cellular solutions, are used by many oil, gas and mining companies. Contingency solutions are also important to fostering economic growth and we work with numerous financial institutions to ensure they have a cost-effective, seamlessly contingency service in case of fiber cuts or other disruptions.
Additionally, we have strategic teleports located in Miami and Lima, Peru, and they give us an advantage in terms of the satellite footprint and teleport services we can provide.
SM
By the way, congratulations on NewCom’s recent acquisition by SpeedCast Limited International. How will this move impact NewCom’s ability to drive social change and advance economic growth throughout Lain America?
Jaime Dickinson
SpeedCast is the perfect company to join forces with as the firm shares our customer-centric values (agility, flexibility, cost-consciousness, quality) and our commitment to leveraging satellite connectivity to make the world a better place.
As a global satellite communications provider with 27 international sales and support offices and 30 teleport operations worldwide, SpeedCast offers NewCom access to the vast global infrastructure, technology and support that will enable us to further leverage satellite communications technology for the benefit of our customers and expand our service offerings throughout the Americas and Africa.
newcominternational.com/
