New Satellite Provides Link to Mexico City

With long-distance telephone service to Mexico City knocked out by last week’s earthquake, officials at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles were unable to offer any relief to the hundreds of callers anxiously seeking word about their relatives in the devastated capital.

“It was a very pathetic situation,” said Federico Chavez, a member of the consulate’s task force on communications. Chavez, however, knew that Hughes Communications in El Segundo had manufactured Mexico’s Morelos communications satellite, which was launched in June from the space shuttle.

He contacted Hughes last Friday, and the company “offered all kinds of support.” Hughes engineers developed a plan to establish a single telephone line between Los Angeles and the Mexican capital.

Search for Equipment

To do that, Hughes had to first send telephone attachments known as modems to the satellite ground station 10 miles outside Mexico City. But Hughes, which is not charging the Mexican government for its help, first had to locate the modems.

“We had them in our supply line for another purpose,” said Hughes Executive Vice President Steve Petrucci. “We caught them en route to New York City and were able to divert them to El Segundo.”

A Hughes engineer flew to Mexico City with the equipment Saturday, carrying with him a designated channel for talking to Los Angeles. In addition, engineers at Hughes’ ground station in Fillmore, 60 miles north of Los Angeles, had to point one of the company’s four antennas at the Morelos satellite.

Microwave Link Set Up

While the antenna was being aimed and the equipment was being installed in Mexico, Hughes engineers also established a microwave link between their ground station in Fillmore and their offices in El Segundo.

“Later we were able to hook the El Segundo end into the telephone system to downtown Los Angeles so the consulate could make phone calls,” said Petrucci.

At 3 p.m. on Monday, a technician in the consulate asked, “Mexico, are you there?”

“OK, gentlemen, you can go ahead,” came the response.

“That was a fantastic moment,” said Chavez. “From then on, there has been a 24-hour shift manning that line.”

Large signs on the consulate’s phone line warn: “Do not touch. Leave open.”

Chavez said the consulate staff is dictating names and telephone numbers of Mexican residents to engineers at the ground station and that “everyone at the ground station there is making calls to relatives of Los Angeles-area residents. Most of the checking has resulted in good news.

“So far this is the only open (telephone) line between Mexico City and the exterior,” Chavez said. “That one line is like having a thousand lines.”