“It is people like Jaime Dickinson who exemplify true leadership in the Latino community and is truly a beacon in our industry. He ensures that every Latino has the opportunity not only to understand the industry but to ensure that no matter how remote the region every child has a fighting chance for an education and to stay connected with the world they live in,” proclaims President and CEO of LISTA, Jose Marquez-Leon. “Dickinson reminds us that we need to do in this industry, which is to work tirelessly domestically and aboard for the great purpose of all.”

The Peruvian born CEO was humbled when he was tapped by the recognized national organization with grassroots tentacles within the community. “It is a true honor to receive such a prestigious award. Those that came before me were trailblazers, and to be considered one among them is truly humbling,” states Dickinson and continues; “It is important that children see us in zenith of success so they to believe as I did when I was their age, that with faith, hard work, and perseverance all is possible no matter where they come from despite the what of their skin, or their accent,” declares Dickinson.

One of Jaime Dickinson’s proudest moments was to be able to provide infrastructure to a rural region of Colombia, which is riddled with poverty, and drug infested crimes. The challenges faced by his organization were monstrous but more importantly the success that came out of the project was eternal. Jaime Dickinson will also have an opportunity to share with participants some of his experiences and insight in the industry as a panelist earlier in the day during the conference and award a scholarship to a young and aspiring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) student.

About NewCom International
NewCom International is an industry leader in the global transport of communications via satellite, IP and fiber, including videoconference and collaboration services. As an innovative communications company, we are committed to the fast, efficient delivery of customized solutions for the oil and gas market. Named the second fastest growing teleport operator in the world, NewCom was founded on the principals of unparalleled customer service and fast delivery. Based in Miami, Florida, we manage dedicated and shared platforms, along with space segment on various satellites. Our world-class teleport facility in Miami and Points of Presence in UK and Singapore provide an excellent home base for companies requiring local and regional fiber connections and Internet access with the best possible IP routes around the world. With our highly trained staff of engineers and comprehensive 24/7 engineering support, we can turn up or update service within 24 hours and provide around-the-clock system monitoring to ensure the service continuity oil and gas businesses require. For more information please log onto www.newcominternational.com.

About Latino in Information Sciences and Technology Association (LISTA)
LISTA (www.a-lista.org) promotes the utilization of the technology sectors for the empowerment of the Latino community. We are an organization that is committed to bringing various elements of Technology under one central hub to facilitate our partners, members and the community with the leverage and education they need to succeed in a highly advanced technologically driven society. LISTA Mission is to educate, motivate and encourage the use of technology in the Latino community and empowering them to bridge the digital divide. Follow the conversation on twitter#techlatino247 or LISTA1.

Immediate Release
Press Contact: Carmen L. Coya
404 408 2103
clcoya@effectivemediagroup.com

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At NewCom International, we’ve always viewed today’s communications technology as a means to make life better for people living in remote regions throughout the developing world.

Using our integrated satellite, WiFi and fiber infrastructure as the foundation, we spent 2011 focusing in on the development and delivery of bundled communications solutions that could advance education, improve health care, ensure public safety and promote economic growth in the critical regions of Latin America and Africa Here’s a look at some of our initiatives in 2011.

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At NewCom International, we’ve partnered with the top VoIP providers in the industry to deliver a turnkey solution for your traditional business calling needs–including multiple lines, voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding and conference calls.

Simply use our analog adapters, sip extensions or sip trunks to connect your analog or SIP phone system and begin saving up to eighty percent on your phone bills. Our prepaid VoIP Telephony program is tailored to your specific international calling needs to ensure your organization benefits from the lowest costs available. Our VoIP program is also ideal for various industry sectors, such as maritime operators and oil and gas companies interested in offering employees the ability to call loved ones while controlling telephone costs.

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NewCom, a global communications provider committed to leveraging 21st century communications to improve lives in developing regions throughout the world, is donating the satellite-based Internet service to enable field workers to coordinate with central staff and other NGOs to facilitate the delivery of non-food items and other critical supplies into the camps.

“At NewCom, we  see the human face behind today’s communications technology and are always looking at ways to bundle communications services  to foster education, advance health care, secure public safety and improve living conditions for people residing in developing countries around the globe,” notes Dora Mejia, director of Business Development for NewCom International. “Welthungerhlife originally approached us to provide internet connectivity for other operations and when they told us about their field work in Liberia and the critical need for internet and voice communications there, we knew we wanted to help.”

Welthungerhlife, which has supported more than 5,500 projects in over seventy countries since it was founded in 1962, provides the crucial infrastructure necessary to help prevent spread of disease in Liberian refugee camps and ensure life-saving supplies can be brought into the camps. The organization builds wells to provide clean drinking water for refugees, and oversees the construction of latrines to help with sanitation. Welthungerhlife is also charged with constructing and maintaining roads and bridges so other NGOs can get to and from the camps.  In addition to supporting the refugee camps, Welthungerhlife works with local communities along the roads from the border, where the largest number of refugees are hosted. Welthungerhlife assists these communities with tools and seeds to enable refugees to become self-sustainable in their food supply, and provides water and sanitation infrastructure to facilitate the sudden huge increase in population.

“The Internet links help us and our NGO partners to communicate with our regional and head offices on logistics—which is a very difficult aspect in a country with such bad infrastructure,” notes Andre Stelder, who oversees projects for Welthungerhlife in Liberia.  “In the rainy season, it is hard or even impossible to reach some of the refugee sites to bring supplies even though we are constantly working to keep roads and bridges open, so communications are essential. NewCom’s donation helps us in our work because any money we save on our operations can be used to do more for beneficiaries.”

If you are committed to excellence, efficiency and unparallelled customer satisfaction and meet the requirements of any of our job openings, we would love to talk with you.

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NOC Attention Schedule

Newcom International Network Operations Center (NOC) is the point of contact to provide support for new activations and monitoring of all existing services.

Activation of new services will be conducted Monday to Friday from 7:00 am to 7:00pm EST.

All reports related to any problem concerning existing services will be attended 24/7 and all necessary actions will be taken until problem is resolved.

Any request not contemplated as a new activation or attention to a problem affecting existing services requiring NOC support outside of the timeframe of Monday to Friday, 7:00am to 7:00pm EST, must be coordinated with the NOC 48 hours ahead of time.

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First Level Support

Access the NewCom NOC as the initial and single point of contact to report any technical problem with or concern about the operation of the service(s) provided by NewCom. A trouble ticket will be open by the NOC operator and the number given should be used from that moment on in any communication with the NOC to facilitate the identification of the issue. Issues can be created by the customer through the Website.

Network Operations Center (NOC)
Web: http://newcominternational.com Main Menu > Support
Phone: (305) 627-6010
Email: noc@newcomInternational.com

Second Level Support

If the issue requires higher level of expertise, there is an internal escalation procedure within NewCom’s support group. NewCom NOC will follow this procedure whenever it is required, but the assigned NOC Engineer will remain as the single point of contact for updates on the resolution of the problem.

NOC Management
Victor Pinol, NOC Manager
Office: (305) 914-1278 – Cel: (786) 419-3810
E-mail: victor.pinol@newcominternational.com
MMS: victor.pinol@tmo.blackberry.net

Management Level Support

In the extraordinary case a technical problem has not been resolved in a timely and adequate manner; the customer can escalate the problem to the management divisions

Operations Management
Raul Acosta, Director of Operations
Office: (305) 914-1283 – Cel: (786) 412-2278
E-mail: raul.acosta@newcominternational.com
MMS: raul.acosta@tmo.blackberry.net

Commercial Management
Dora Mejia, Director of Sales
Office: (305) 914-1264 – Cel: (786) 412-2754
E-mail: dora.mejia@newcominternational.com
MMS: dora.mejia@tmo.blackberry.net

General Management
Jaime Dickinson, President
Office: (305) 914-1266 – Cel: (786) 412-2751
E-mail: jaime.dickinson@newcominternational.com
MMS: jaime.dickinson@tmo.blackberry.net

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Alejandra Finol, Accounting
Office: (305) 914-1291
E-mail: alejandra.finol@newcominternational.com
MMS: alejandra.finol@tmo.blackberry.net

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The 1.8m antenna sitting on top of the laundry building at Hospital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti, a rural northern community located only 70 miles from the still-devastated city of Port au Prince, might not look like much to passersby.

But to the dedicated staff at the over-stretched 73-bed hospital — many of whom are volunteers working around the clock to care for Haitians who have suffered unimaginable disease and hardship since last year’s horrific earthquake — that antenna symbolizes the difference between life and death.

“It is not exaggerating to say this will save lives,” said Tim Traynor, building and grounds coordinator for Sacre Coeur who spearheaded the Internet/telemedicine project for the hospital. “I would suspect that it has already done so even in the short period of time it has been up. Even for a small hospital in the United States to have exposure to this kind of technology would be awesome. To have this available in Haiti is unheard of.”

The Internet and telemedicine project was made possible through a collaborative effort between iDirect, which donated all of the necessary equipment, and NewCom International, which donated a year of high bandwidth satellite-based Internet connectivity, VideoMeetings technology, project management and technical support. The system officially went live in early February, providing what Traynor calls a “revolutionary service” for the struggling hospital. Beyond the critical life-saving support the technology provides, what makes the project remarkable is the lengths to which everyone involved had to go to in order to make it a success.

What started as a relatively quick project in June of last year turned into an arduous seven-month process marred by disease, natural disaster, and civil unrest that has become an all-too-familiar way of life in Haiti.

Connecting Sacre Coeur To The World
It was Traynor, who left the comfort and security of the corporate world in the U.S. a few years ago to devote his life to helping the hospital care for the people of Haiti, who initiated the call with iDirect. For months he had been frantically trying to consult with doctors in the U.S. and generate media exposure that would bring medical help for thousands of patients seriously injured in the January earthquake. The hospital didn’t have the bandwidth or software necessary to make multi-party conference calls so he resorted to conducting interviews and consultations via Skype™, where he was continually losing connectivity due to a passing storm cloud or the erratic behavior of a particular satellite modem.

“All we had were three Starband units with another network and connectivity was poor or non-functioning on all four dishes during the day,” says Traynor. “Night brought a little better service because of a decrease in satellite traffic. But a passing cloud or the constant threat of a thunderstorm rendered these systems useless until calm, blue sky reappeared. Email was as or less reliable than snail mail because there was no expectation that the correspondence would ever reach its mark.”

When a visiting volunteer who understood the dire situation that the lack of reliable Internet communications posed for the hospital told Traynor she knew an executive at iDirect, a global leader in satellite communications technology, Traynor jumped on the opportunity. His request for help was routed to Rob Kilroy, Regional Vice President for the Americas, who readily agreed to offer assistance. However, in assessing the situation, Kilroy realized that beyond equipment, the hospital was in need of a satellite-based Internet service provider and immediately turned to NewCom International, a global satellite communications provider that focuses on providing bundled solutions that make a positive social impact in the world.

“NewCom has been a long-time customer of iDirect and is very strong servicing Latin America,” explains Kilroy. “They have an excellent teleport facility in Miami and offer incredible customer support. The culture at iDirect and NewCom are very similar in that when there is a serious issue, it becomes about a lot more than making a dollar. It’s about `How can we help?’”

The project started out quite smoothly. Christian Vivas, who oversees IP services and procurement for NewCom, consulted with Traynor to understand the exact needs of the hospital. He then customized a solution, requested a 1.8m antenna, modem, routers, cable kit and other necessary equipment from iDirect, and began configuring and testing the service. Jaime Munera, Director of Product Development and IT for NewCom, stepped in to handle the VideoMeetings portion of the project, helping Traynor and his team to understand the full interactive telemedicine capabilities of the technology, which enables a team of medical experts from different locations around the world to collaborate in real time over video and online whiteboard to diagnose and treat a patient.

Within a few weeks, the system was ready to be shipped to the hospital, installed and activated. “It was all pretty straightforward,” recalls Vivas. “Tim said he could take care of the transport so from that point, it was just a waiting game for us until the equipment landed at the hospital.”

Trouble Brews
Traynor contacted The Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, which has been working with Sacre Coeur since the early days after the earthquake hit Haiti. The cruise line staff agreed to bring in the equipment from Miami and drop it off at their port of call in Labadee, located approximately 30 miles from Milot.

The logistics were more difficult than anticipated. However, by autumn, the cruise lines had managed to bring in the 1.8m VSAT antenna donated by iDirect for installation. Then trouble hit.

In early November, Hurricane Tomas bore down on Milot and the surrounding areas. The storm brought torrential rains into the open trenches that served as sewer lines, which led to flooding and a deadly Cholera outbreak. The outbreak of the deadly disease, coupled by the civil unrest that followed, kept the cruise line from stopping at the Labadee port. As a result, Traynor had to rely on help from hospital volunteers who were coming from the United States to bring in the rest of the equipment, which further delayed the process.

When all the equipment finally made it to the hospital, Traynor brought in an installer and coordinated with NewCom’s Network Operations Center to walk through the installation process. During installation, NewCom discovered that one of the modems had been damaged during transport and had to be returned — causing another delay while iDirect quickly sent a replacement satellite remote router to NewCom, which had to reconfigure it and then get it back down to the hospital.

After a rocky, seven month effort, the pieces were finally in place and between NewCom’s NOC and Traynor’s efforts, the system was finally launched.

“It’s been a long, arduous process and without NewCom’s continued support and refusal to get discouraged along the way, this project wouldn’t have happened,” said Traynor. “In a place like Haiti, we are always trying to overcome just the challenges of day-to-day life and a lot of people get discouraged by this. It’s nice to have that spark of excitement — that ving, vang, voom at the beginning of a project. But it takes something altogether different to grind it out when there is no spark, and that’s what NewCom did. Every time I called, they gave me the assistance I needed and were there every step of the way. They have been remarkable. I can’t imagine how they service people who are actually paying them.

Success
The system went live in February 2011 and, as its first test, Traynor immediately sent cardio graphic information on seven pediatric pulmonary cases — which required two gigs of data — to doctors in the United States. Since then, several video consultations have taken place and Traynor envisions using the technology to launch weekly training sessions in which medical experts from throughout the U.S. would hold virtual classes with groups of nurses at the hospital.

Traynor, who calls the Internet/telemedicine project “an extraordinary gift that is changing the face of health care in Haiti,” says the difference the technology has made is monumental.

“During the quake relief activities, this thin thread of unreliable to non-existent connectivity was all we had to connect our doctors, donors, suppliers and others who availed themselves to the fragile lifeline we had established,” says Traynor. “By contrast, the current VSAT network provides a strong, reliable signal even through the worst of tropical storms or most impenetrable cloud cover.”

Knowing that their joint efforts have made such a powerful impact on the lives of people in Haiti is a gratifying, humbling experience for the team at iDirect and NewCom. Both companies say the project illustrates what they view as the big picture when it comes to satellite communication, which is to use the reach and power of today’s global communications technology to change lives.

“The iDirect platform is designed to overcome traditional threats to satellite links such as weather and latency,” says Kilroy. “We are proud to be part of such a life-saving effort with NewCom. When I was contacted by the hospital I immediately thought, ‘what can we do that would have an impact?’ and I thought of partnering with NewCom. This was a huge challenge on all of our parts and it’s nice to see perseverance pays off.”

“We’re grateful that iDirect brought this opportunity to us,” adds Munera. “It’s what we are continually striving toward as a business, which is to take an integrated approach and bundled satellite communications into comprehensive solutions that drives positive social advancements around the globe. By taking a more integrated approach, connectivity has a purpose: It becomes a tool for education, health care and improving the welfare of people around the world.”