Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) has renewed its partnership with Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) to support the organization’s humanitarian aid operations throughout the world. The renewal of the partnership, first concluded in 2007, was signed by Michel de Rosen, Eutelsat CEO and Jean-Francois Cazenave, President of Télécoms Sans Frontières.

Based in Pau (France), with regional offices in Bangkok (Thailand) and Managua (Nicaragua), Télécoms Sans Frontières is a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in providing emergency telecommunications services. Since it was set up in 1998, more than 500 aid organisations operating in 60 countries have worked with TSF to restore immediate communications empowering relief and rescue teams and set up equipment and services needed for longer term operations. TSF has integrated Eutelsat’s D-STAR broadband service into telecommunications solutions deployed for the humanitarian community active in Europe, Africa and the Americas. Operating independently from terrestrial networks, fast to install and able to serve single or multiple work stations and Wi-Fi networks, D-STAR terminals have been set up at strategic coordination centres in the immediate aftermath of events destroying terrestrial communications, as well as for longer term humanitarian work. Beyond its response to major emergencies, TSF is reinforcing its long-term initiatives in Africa with the implementation of sustainable community telecommunications centres in some of the most remote and vulnerable areas. To help meet this objective, D-STAR terminals have been set up in Niger and Burkina Faso that can help develop the agricultural economy of isolated communities as well as medical and school services.