Iridium Communications Provides Telephones for Kosovo Refugees
Washington, April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Iridium Communications Germany is providing free satellite telephone services and equipment to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in Yugoslavia.
This week the North Atlantic Treaty Organization estimated that about 400,000 Kosovar Albanians have fled to neighboring countries over the last two weeks.
Iridium Communications Germany, a partial owner of Washington, D.C.-based Iridium LLC, said it is shipping 12 mobile telephones to four refugee camps in Skopje, Macedonia, tomorrow. The company said it plans to sent 50 more telephones for refugees' free use in the next several days. ''One of the things that refugees want to do more than anything else, apart from standing in food queues, is to telephone their loved ones, because families have been uprooted, nobody knows where their brothers or sisters or aunts and uncles are,'' said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. ''And in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, some refugees have preferred to spend 10 hours in a queue to make a quick phone call than one hour in a queue to get a loaf of bread and some water.''
Iridium is providing the phones ''really to let these poor desperate people call home,'' said Don Burns, chief executive officer of Iridium Communications Germany, which owns and operates European stations for Iridium LLC, operator of a global satellite telephone network.
Burns estimated the operation would cost about $250,000. Each telephone costs roughly $3,000 in the retail market, and a minute of satellite connection costs between $2 and $8, Burns said.
NATO officials welcomed the assistance as relief workers struggled to coordinate services and facilities for the hundreds of thousands of refugees left homeless by the conflict. ''Bravo and thank you Iridium,'' said Shea.
About 305,000 refugees are now in Albania, Agence France Press reported, citing the United Nation's refugee agency. About 121,000 more are in Macedonia and 61,000 are in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro.
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