U.S. State Department Relies on Ooma for Haiti Relief

Ooma has served as a vital lifeline to the ongoing Haiti relief efforts being coordinated at the U.S. Embassy in Port au Prince. After January's tragic earthquake, the Ooma devices allowed the Embassy to call the US during a time when the international lines, local phone lines, and cell phone lines were either saturated, destroyed, or out of service. Most of the country's telecommunications infrastructure was destroyed. Our teams in the field and back at the Embassy could not function with unreliable phone service. It was critical that the U.S. Embassy deploy a reliable, secure, and high-quality communications channel in the field in order to identify and deliver sustainable assistance and share mission critical information with tactical command centers across Haiti and stateside. The flexibility and portability of Ooma Telo’s were invaluable to the sustainable success of our relief efforts.

— Jerry Oetgen, Counselor for Public Affairs

Here are some examples of how the Ooma Telo was used:

1,500+ relief workers based at the embassy depended on multiple Ooma Telo systems to start planning the movements of equipment and supplies;
Ooma devices helped over 20 different federal agencies and NGO’s (non- government organizations) organize the relief effort;
At the airport while the Embassy was evacuating 17,000 American citizens back to the U.S., the Ooma devices were setup to allow calls back to the Embassy control room, and also to allow evacuees to call home;
These devices were used in the extreme environment of the airport tarmac and still work perfectly despite being rained on, and caked with dust, dirt, and jet fuel;
Because of their ease of installation and high quality, we have been using the Ooma devices to support several high level visitors, to include two former presidents, and the First Lady;
We discovered that they could be used to send faxes, and provided a dedicated line to the various security agencies that were supporting the high level visitors.