Broadband provider CenturyLink has donated and installed high-speed broadband to the hospital ship Mercy, which pulled into port in Los Angeles Friday (March 27) to provide hospital beds and care there during the coronavirus pandemic.
The ship is being used to house other patients at hospitals expected to have all they can handle dealing with COVID-19 patients during the Pandemic.
At press time California had the third-most recorded cases of the virus after New York and New Jersey.
CenturyLink is providing a 1 gig ethernet connection free for one year, connecting the Defense Information Systems Agency's Air Station with the ship.
“When the military reached out to us about providing dockside connectivity to the USNS Mercy with two days’ notice before it arrived in Los Angeles, we quickly put our network expertise to work to make it happen,” said Ed Morche, CenturyLink’s president of enterprise and government markets.
The ship is providing 1,000 extra beds and almost as many medical personnel, as well as a dozen operating rooms.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave CenturyLink a shout out in a tweet Sunday (March 29).
[embed]https://twitter.com/AjitPaiFCC/status/1244413570902831105[/embed]
