The City of Smithville recently had to depend on OnSIP VoIP and LiveAir Networks for the reliable means of communication during the Bastrop County Complex wildfires in Texas.

Smithville Mayor, Mark A. Bunte said that during the critical first hours and days of the Bastrop County Complex Wildfires, at a time when they had basically no means of communication, LiveAir was able to step up and get them the tools in reestablishing contact to the E.O.C. “I cannot thank Mr. Breeden and his company enough on behalf of the City of Smithville,” said the Mayor.

LiveAir Networks’ team took responsibility to quickly act and in no time it supplied Internet access and Polycom (News - Alert) phones to the police station, city hall, and community centers. Using OnSIP, LiveAir assigned phone numbers and established phone service, enabling all entities to make and receive calls

“On Monday, September 5, the citizens of Smithville awoke to virtually no cell phone service, no landline phone service, limited cable television service, and a major wildfire only... miles west of town,” said James Breeden, CEO of LiveAir Networks, a provider of high speed internet services in Central Texas.

LiveAir Networks till date has invested over $750,000 in its Central Texas infrastructure covering over 2400 square miles of Bastrop, Fayette and Lee counties of Texas including the towns of Smithville, Giddings, Lexington, La Grange, and Flatonia. LiveAir’s privately owned and operated Metro Ethernet network delivers rural customers unparalleled client service and connectivity that ensures speed, reliability, and performance.

City of Smithville parks and recreation director and volunteer firefighter Andis Goble said that LiveAir’s quick deployment of OnSIP VoIP “very well could have saved lives.”

“OnSIP came to the rescue when everything else in town had failed,” added Breeden. “I’m positive that we couldn’t have deployed another solution [at] the sheer speed we did that morning to make calls happen”

OnSIP, by Junction Networks (News - Alert), is an intuitive and reliable business phone service on the Internet for companies with 5 to 100 employees. The company has 10,000 customers and is a leading provider of hosted pbx to small and medium-sized businesses.