The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has contracted with F4W, Inc. for its core communication systems. The systems will be placed at VA's twelve Emergency Management Strategic Healthcare Group (EMSHG) regional offices nationwide, providing VA with secure, resilient communications in the event of natural disasters and other emergencies.

"We're very proud to be able to support VA and veterans with our state-of-the-art communications equipment," said Harry Timmons, president of F4W. "We believe that our technology is the best in the marketplace, and will significantly improve VA's ability to respond to hurricanes, earthquakes and other emergency situations."

F4W's communications systems utilize the power and flexibility of the Internet and Voice over IP (VoIP) technology to enable encrypted voice and data connections without the need for additional hardware. The company's systems use any available connection to access the Internet for voice and data connectivity without relying on any single system or communications provider.

Using one of F4W's systems, VA employees will be able to conduct up to twenty simultaneous phone calls over a 3G cellular modem. Every call will be secure, private and have high sound quality. The systems purchased by VA come in an easily transported kit form so that they can be quickly delivered to individual facilities requiring assistance.

Each kit provides voice and data communications across any available network. If normal network infrastructure is unavailable, the kit also contains a broadband satellite system to ensure connectivity beyond the incident site. The kit requires no technical support to set up and needs only 10 to 20 minutes to begin working.

Timmons pointed to Hurricane Katrina as an example of the kinds of challenges the new kits will help to solve.

"VA's decision not to evacuate its New Orleans Medical Center before the storm required the hospital to do a lot of improvising to keep its patients and staff safe," he said. "They had a satellite phone system, but could only use it to communicate with the outside world from the roof of the building, and for brief periods of time. Although VA's response to Katrina was ultimately successful, there's no question that our system would have helped the hospital to better look after its patients."

Timmons adds that "we'd eventually like to place one of the kits at every VA facility."