PM DWTS teams with nonprofit organization to help Soldiers in Iraq contact home: country star Rodney Atkins to help launch network

Army Communicator, Summer, 2004 by Stephen Larsen

One of the toughest things about being a deployed Soldier is being away from your family. Many of the Soldiers in Iraq are young parents and won't see their spouses or children for a year or more. But thanks to the donation of millions of dollars of telecommunications equipment and services to the Army by the Freedom Calls Foundation, these Soldiers will soon be able to more easily send e-mail to or call their loved ones at home.

Since August 2003, the Freedom Calls Foundation has collected some $10 million worth of donations for equipment and services to provide free Internet, voice over Internet Protocol telephone and videoteleconference services for up to 10,000 troops. The Army officially accepted the donation on April 6, 2004.

"We expect to be configuring and testing the network for the balance of (this) week," said John Harlow, executive director of Freedom Calls. "Our facility has engendered quite a bit of interest from the troops in the camp."

Ed Bukstel, operations director of Freedom Calls, said country music star Rodney Atkins has pledged to help to launch the Freedom Calls network with a live concert that will be video-teleconferenced to Iraq from a military base.

"I can't imagine how happy the families of these Soldiers will be when this program is fully operational," said Atkins. "I think it's a wonderful use of this exciting communication technology."

Started with an e-mail

The initiative started in August, 2003, when Bukstel, the executive vice president of SkyFrames Inc., a satellite telecommunications company, of Costa Mesa, Calif., received an e-mail "out of the blue," from a sergeant in Iraq.

"She (the sergeant) wrote to me that communications available for Soldiers in her unit to contact home were very poor and that it would be helpful to troop morale if they could get Internet access and e-mail so they could stay in touch with loved ones," said Bukstel. "She asked if I had any ideas that might help."

SkyFrames issued a press release to ask for donations to help out this unit in Iraq. Harlow, a Wall Street lawyer, read the release, contacted Bukstel, and together they established the Freedom Calls Foundation, a non-profit entity incorporated in the state of New York and registered with the Charities Bureau of the state of New York Department of Law.

Among the larger donors, Bukstel said, Hewlett-Packard donated 1,000 laptop computers, 100 printers and scanners; Logitech donated 500 web cameras and microphones; Loral Space & Communications donated Very-Small Aperture Terminal satellite dishes, hub connections and a full year subscription of free bandwidth; Motorola donated a wireless broadband platform that will allow troops in a 15-mile radius to tie into the network; and FedEx donated "in excess of" $300,000 of cargo space to get the gear to Iraq. Bukstel said that an American engineer is working with an Iraqi telecom company to provide installation and maintenance services.

The waiting is the hardest part

Among those helping Freedom Calls navigate through Army channels for approval of the donation have been the Army's Product Manager, Defense Wide Transmission Systems--first, LTC Michael Kwak and then his successor, LTC Earl Noble--and Janice Starek, a project leader for PM DWTS.

Starek, who was an intern at a Military Affiliate Radio Station during the first Gulf War, said Kwak, Noble and she were determined to make this work. "We didn't let it drop, we thought it was a good thing, said Starek. "After all, these Soldiers are putting their lives on the line."

Some of the issues to be ironed out, Starek said, have been who will be responsible for the donated equipment when it's in Iraq, and what will happen to it after the troops come home? Starek said the equipment will be signed for by local Morale, Welfare and Recreation personnel in Iraq and that at the completion of the mission, PM DWTS will be responsible for determining disposition.

"The equipment will either be transferred to other MWR activities, placed on long-term storage or disposed of, if the equipment is obsolete at that point," said Starek.

But in the end, the waiting was worth it. Just ask a Soldier.

"Calling home is the biggest morale booster there is," said SPC Johanna Adams, a personnel specialist with the 4th Infantry Division in Iraq.

PM DWTS got a taste of how sweet it can be to help Soldiers in Iraq stay in touch with loved ones on June 6, 2003, when a team including the Armed Forces Network--Europe, the 509th Signal Battalion, the Army Field Support Command, Italia Telecom, TAMSCO and a Network Operations Center located at Fort Monmouth worked together to set up a VTC between Vicenza High School, a DoD school in Vicenza, Italy and students' parents, deployed in Iraq--allowing the parents to "virtually" be there for the once-in-a-lifetime experience of their child's high school graduation. After the ceremony, students and parents spoke to each other through the VTC link. As you can imagine, through the VTC link there were personal face-to-face congratulations and tearful reunions. A commander in Iraq wrote that the VTC "had to be the biggest morale booster I've witnessed in 25 years of military service. The VTC brought a once-in-a-lifetime event to the battlefield of Iraq. The joy I witnessed on both ends of the video monitor will be in war stories for many generations to come."