PingTone Helps Troops Feel Closer to Home

Kabul, Afghanistan—Military personnel currently deployed in the Persian Gulf region don't feel quite as far from home as in past conflicts thanks to PingTone and several leading Satellite-to-IP bandwidth provider partners.

PingTone Communications provides business telephone services to corporate and government customers based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies. The company has been working closely since 2003 with several of its partners, who provide high speed data bandwidth service over satellite to remote locations around the world, in order to deliver end-to-end business quality telephone service to troops deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq and other, until now, difficult to serve areas.

“Helping this effort has been an exciting and satisfying experience for the company” remarked PingTone President Bill Smedberg. “Soldiers, support personnel and contractors working in areas without roads, buildings or even power are able to use IP phones from Cisco Systems to call anywhere in the world as if they were sitting in an office in the middle of New York or Washington.” One forward deployed support technician responsible for setting up the equipment in the field commented “it seems like magic to first time users; we can set up a small satellite dish, generator and cabling in under an hour, plug in Cisco IP phones with PingTone service and ‘voila’; crystal clear telephone service complete with a U.S. phone number.” The result of this new technology and PingTone service is easy to see on the faces of troops as they catch up on everyday life with their families even though they're thousands of miles from home.

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