Highlights
The Digital Mobile Radio project (DMR) will start in South Sudan now that five UN agencies, including UNICEF, UNESCO, OCHA, UN Habitat, and UNFPA have signed the Memorandum of Understanding. WFP shall initially fund the start-up awaiting shared contribution from the signatories of the agreement.
The emergency.lu equipment in Mingkaman has been decommissioned and shipped to Juba. A plan to redeploy the equipment to Leer in Unity State to support the light-based camp managed by Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is in progress.
The ETC (emergency telecommunications cluster) is currently working with Communication with Community (CwC) working group, supporting the effort to establish a feedback mechanism through a two-way communication platform.
Situation Overview
Since its activation in 2011 following the country’s independence, the ETC has provided humanitarians across South Sudan with vital telecommunications services. The lack of vital infrastructure to support the humanitarian response in the country mean that ETC security telecommunications services are the only reliable form of communications for humanitarian actors on the ground. The ETC will migrate from analogue to DMR which is more robust and provides greater coverage and better tracking GPS (global positioning system) features.
The ETC is also supporting the response community with the development and implementation of the Humanitarian Internet Support Project (HISP), a reliable, low-cost and long-term solution to meet the internet connectivity needs of humanitarian actors in remote and hard-to-reach locations.