Business Week magazine has an interesting but lightweight article on Telecoms Sans Frontieres, available online at Technology on Disaster’s Frontlines.� It’s atrociously written, at one point referring to “a swat team of Telecoms Without Borders” – Special Weapons And Tactics is a massively inappropriate and inaccurate metaphor for a humanitarian organisation.
What’s interesting is what’s not in the article.� TSF is finalising standing agreements with the UN to provide first response telecoms support under the cluster approach.� This is both good – because they do good work – and not good – because their capacity isn’t that large right now, and the sustainability of their operations (which are carried out on the MSF get-in-first, get-out-first model) is often questioned.
However, with support from the UN Foundation for longer-term developments, and a more recent focus on developing their medium-term presence, TSF are likely to become the front line emergency telecoms provider in the near future.� (I was hoping for a more snappy conclusion, but there you go.)
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