Q&A: How Telesat is bringing connectivity to disaster-struck Venezuela

As the death toll continues to rise after a pair of massive earthquakes hit Venezuela last week, Canada’s Telesat Corp. is using its satellite fleet to provide cell signal to the South American country’s hardest-hit areas. In an interview, Stephen Hampton, Telesat’s head of global government relations, told The Wire Report connectivity is often a life-or-death issue in the aftermath of natural disasters, and why the Ottawa-based company is proud to be doing its small part in relief efforts. Can you give me the backstory behind this announcement in Venezuela? How did this happen? So, this is with our existing geostationary satellites. We have a really good customer in Venezuela called Top Communications and, when the tragic earthquake hit last week, they reached out and we had some additional capacity that we quickly made available. Antennas were repointed over the weekend and Top Communications is now plugged in and providing free Wi-Fi and connectivity services to the communities that are most affected. If we take a quick step back, broadband connectivity has become so ubiquitous and, in times of a natural disaster like this, being able to have access to connectivity allows for quicker responses, and allows for much more efficient and direct engagement to actually go in and save people. LAST WEEK’S Q&A: J’accuse! This arts and culture group thinks Ottawa is failing Quebec’s anglophones My wife is Venezuelan and there was a period there where we hadn’t heard from certain family. Thankfully, everyone is safe but being able to have that connectivity and help the first responders, families, and friends connect with one another is so critical. When we saw this happen, our hearts were broken and we quickly sprung into action. So, we’re really proud that we can do our small part in the immediate recovery. Has Telesat done this sort of thing before, in terms of providing connectivity to areas affected by natural disasters? We have done this kind of thing in the past. I don’t have a specific example and I don’t want to misspeak, but this is something we have absolutely done in the past. How long will this connectivity be available in Venezuela? Is there a timeline? We haven’t put out a number, but it will be for a while. It will certainly be there for this initial recovery period. Does that mean weeks? Months? Months. Can you speak more to how this announcement will specifically help someone struggling in Venezuela? What’s the pragmatic impact over the next couple weeks? Let’s say you’ve got a search crew going into a collapsed building and they find someone who needs urgent medical care. If you have connectivity, you can signal in for medical care to come to that specific point. That’s one extreme example. Another example could be coordinating food, water, and shelter, where you’ve got the Red Cross going in and they need to coordinate accordingly with local authorities and people. Maybe you’ve got a child or a person in Caracas who’s trying to reach their mother, and the community has had fibre or the cell tower knocked out. With connectivity restored, it’s that real tangible access of it all because connectivity is the thing that empowers all the other things we’re trying to do. In this instance, coordinating the response on the ground with first responders absolutely needs connectivity, and to be able to rapidly deploy free Wi-Fi for the community is key. This interview has been edited for length and clarity dlegree@thewirereport.ca

Q&A: How Telesat is bringing connectivity to disaster-struck Venezuela

Telecom |
By Davis Legree
|July 3, 2026

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Q&A: How Telesat is bringing connectivity to disaster-struck Venezuela

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