Telecommunications in Haiti

Despite low literacy levels (52%) and wide-ranging poverty, Haiti managed to increase its mobile phone coverage rate from 6% to 30% in just one year (May 2006 to May 2007). Haiti is now the driving force in the mobile phone growth rate in the Caribbean. Radio still remains the primary information medium for most Haitians.

Radio

Radio broadcast stations: AM 41, FM 26, shortwave 0 (1999)

Radios: 500,000 (1997)

Television

Television broadcast stations: 4 in Port-au-Prince (plus a cable TV system) (2005)

Televisions: 38,120 (1997)

Telephone

Telephones - main lines in use: 160,000 (2010)^[1]

Natcom, the result of the privatization of Télécommunications d'Haiti S.A.M. (Teleco) in 2010, has a monopoly on the provision of landline services throughout the country. The Vietnamese company Viettel bought a 60% share, with the Haitian government keeping the remaining 40% of the company.^[2]

Teleco was constantly hobbled by political interference which affected its performance. A net generator of revenues for the government in the 1970s and early 1980s, Teleco's demise started with the Prosper Avril government which spent Teleco's profits on politically-motivated campaigns and outright graft. The practice continued with the Aristide government.

Telephones - mobile cellular: 3.2 million (2010) or 35% coverage rate.^[3]

There are three major cell phone providers in Haiti: Digicel, Comcel, and Haitel.

Comcel, a subsidiary of Trilogy International Partners, LLC, was a TDMA company which launched its service in September 1999. Haitel, an independent company founded by Franck Ciné, a Haitian-American and former MCI/Worldcom executive, adopted CDMA technology. Digicel Haiti, an affiliate of the pan-Caribbean Digicel Group won Haiti's first GSM license in June 2005 and launched service in early 2006.

In May 2006, Comcel and Haitel had a total of about 500,000 subscribers - that is a cell phone coverage rate of 6% for a population of 8.2 million. Then, Digicel entered the market in May 2006, and revolutionized the cell phone industry with low prices and attractive services so that after just one year of operations, May 2006-May 2007, Digicel went from zero to 1.4 millions subscribers. The other two cell phone providers, Comcel and Haitel, responded by cutting their prices and offering new services such as Voilà, a GSM service by Comcel, and CDMA 2000 by Haitel. As a result, Comcel and Haitel increased their subscribers from 500,000 to 1 million. As of October 2010, Digicel has about 2.2 millions cell phone subscribers in Haiti.^[4] In May 2007, Digicel started offering two BlackBerry services with Internet, one for enterprises and one for individuals.

Telephone system: Domestic facilities are barely adequate. International facilities are slightly better
domestic: coaxial cable and microwave radio relay trunk service
international: satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean)

Internet

Haiti's country code top-level domain is .ht. It is managed by Consortium FDS/RDDH. As of March 2009, it had 1155 domain names registered.^[5]

There are 5 Internet service providers serving the country. Among them are Multilink, H@inet and Access Haiti. In June 2010, Viettel (Natcom) announced that it would provide high speed internet throughout the country by laying 3100 km of optical fiber.^[6]

The Haitian telecommunications authority, CONATEL, has decided in October 2010 to allow the introduction of 3G services by the mobile telephone service providers.^[7] This will enable them to deploy faster mobile internet access speeds throughout their network than what is currently available with GPRS/EDGE.

References

1. ^ (French)Le Matin : "De Téléco à Natcom / Une entreprise publique étrangère pour privatiser une entreprise publique haïtienne !"
2. ^ (French)Le Nouvelliste : "Et la Téléco devient Natcom"
3. ^ (French) Le Nouvelliste : "Digicel s'impatiente pour sa licence de fournisseur d'accès internet"
4. ^ (French) LaPresse Affaires : "Réseau cellulaire Digicel en Haïti: 2,2 millions d'abonnés en quatre ans"
5. ^ (French)Consortium FDS/RDDH : Statistics
6. ^ (French)Le Nouvelliste : "Viettel promet l'Internet à haut débit et à bon marché"
7. ^ (French)CONATEL : "Les services mobiles par téléphone, à l’aube d’énormes bouleversements au benefice du consommateur Haïtien."