Liberty Caribbean, operators of Flow Jamaica andLiberty Business communicate data messaging connectivity is now available to over70% of its mobile data customers through Starlink Direct to Cell satellites in theaftermath of devastating Hurricane Melissa.

As Hurricane Melissa made landfall in the parish of St. Elizabeth early Tuesdaymorning the company announced it was able to deliver emergency connectivity viaSMS and text services to its customers. This was possible through spectrum approvedvia the Spectrum Management Authority and the Ministry of Energy, Transport, andTelecommunications to allow the company to collaborate with Starlink’s Direct to Cellservices.

‘The availability of our FLOW Essential service provided basic SMS and textmessaging as Hurricane Melissa made landfall. Throughout the day we workedclosely with Starlink and their Direct to Cell division to restore as many communicationoptions as possible to our customers in Jamaica and now we’re able to also offer datamessaging connectivity to over 70% of our mobile data customers,” said Inge Smidts,CEO Liberty Caribbean. “This means we can now provide essential emergencymobile data connectivity in addition to SMS and text on the FLOW Starlink network,”she added.

“Nation rebuilding and the road to recovery will be long, given the magnitude of thestorm and sheer devastation left in its wake. The ability to communicate will be criticaland we wanted to give our customers one less thing to worry about,” Smidtsconcluded.

This collaboration between Liberty Caribbean and Starlink will offer island widenetwork redundancy to deliver satellite connectivity seamlessly direct to mobilecustomers while the local mobile network infrastructure is unavailable.