When disaster strikes, cellphone connections are among the first things to go by the wayside — so what will emergency responders who rely on that connectivity do?
That’s one of the big questions that first responders in Redmond, Wash., addressed this month during a two-day emergency preparedness drill called Cascadia Rising Solutions. And it was up to Kymeta, a Redmond-based startup backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, to provide answers.
Kymeta is creating a hybrid connectivity platform that makes use of standard cellular networks as well as satellite links and Wi-Fi to keep responders connected even when the cell towers go down. And Cascadia Rising Solutions provided the perfect opportunity to put Kymeta’s platform to a hometown test.
“It’s all up, all the time,” Ben Posthuma, Kymeta product manager for advanced connectivity, told GeekWire after the Oct. 18-19 exercise was over. “We have a platform that identifies the right pathway for the right type of information. The responders get connected to their vehicle as easily as they would connect to a Wi-Fi network.”
