by alec on May 24, 2011
When Voxbone CEO Rodrigue Ullens saw that the ITU had assigned the UN a country code, he thought “They could use our help.” Inbound international calling, after all, is Voxbone’s core business. Tomorrow, Voxbone will announce an agreement with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to implement country code +888 on behalf of UN agencies engaged in rendering assistance to nations or regions affected by natural disasters, such as the Southeast Asian tsunami, or Haiti’s earthquake.
Rod Ullens has long advocated “country codes” without borders. With the UN, he has found the perfect application for that vision.
As Ullens explained to me, +888 is a real country code assigned by the ITU to the UN. In cases of humanitarian need, where telephone systems may be inoperable because of natural disaster, the first teams on the ground would deploy a local GSM antenna, connected via satellite to the rest of the world. Then Voxbone would simply forward calls to the +888 country code via satellite to the local GSM station on the ground. The impact is that UN inter-agency, intra-agency, and external users will be able to dial a +888 number assigned to a relief agency from anywhere in the world, and be immediately connected to that relief agency in the field, in whatever country being served. Not only that, the numbers need never change. Relief staff will be reachable on the same numbers in whatever location they are currently assigned.
Voxbone expects that it will take at least a year to deploy the country code +888 globally, but notes that there is good reachability already because of the existing agreements the company has with telcos across the world.
And with the support of the UN, the rest of the world should go quickly.
by alec on January 27, 2010
Today is my birthday. And, while I’m not nearly as talented as Wolfgang Mozart and Lewis Carroll, it’s a birthday I hold in common with these two gentleman.
This year I decided to try the Facebook application Causes as a way to celebrate. Causes lets you tell your friends that you’d rather have a donation to a charity than a birthday gift. They even provide ways for you to promote your cause, and collect the money on your friends behalf and send it to the charity you’ve chosen.
I selected Oxfam Canada for their relief efforts in Haiti. Oxfam already had people on the ground in Haiti, and my reasoning was simply that the money would likely be put to work faster as a result. They’re currently supplying clean water and housing to 92,000 people in Haiti and need all the help they can get.
I could easily have selected the Red Cross or Unicef, as both of those had people in Haiti as well. The reason for choosing Oxfam’s Canadian arm was simply that Canada’s Federal Government is matching money donated to Canadian charities for Haitian relief. Every dollar turns into two dollars this way.
The campaign has been a bit of a disappointment. I reckoned that if a reasonable percentage of the 2,100 friends I have on Facebook each gave just $10, then thousands could be collected for Haitian relief. We’ve raised $250, including the $50 I seeded the campaign with. With the government match, that adds up to $500.
I’m hoping that since today is my actual birthday, and the last day of the campaign, a few more people will come out of the woodwork. I’d like to get to $1,000 at least. If you’d like to make a $10 donation to help kids in Haiti, then click here. Don’t worry if you don’t use Facebook – just click the big green donate button in the center of the screen and choose the option that says donate without Facebook.
Do it for the kids in Haiti. Or because I asked. Or, failing that, because I’m sure that Lewis Carroll and Mozart both would have approved too.
