HAITI Media and Telecoms Landscape Guide - Infoasaid

161Natcom is the successor company to Télécommunications d'Haïti (Teleco), thedeficit-ridden state-owned company which formerly ran Haiti’s fixed line network.Natcom inherited Teleco’s landline telephone customers.It has built up a 3,000 km network of fibre-optic cable, which will be used to develophigh speed internet access as well as telephone services in the future.The introduction of fixed radio access technology – which uses a radio signal insteadof a copper wire to complete the final link between the network and the subscriber –may allow Natcom to promote a revival of fixed location phones in homes andbusiness premises.Digicel and Natcom both offer good network coverage, despite the difficulties causedby Haiti’s mountainous geography.Shortly before its acquisition by Digicel, Voilà claimed that its network covered 90%of Haiti’s population.Voilà launched the first mobile phone service in Haiti in 1999 using TDMAtechnology.Six years later, in 2005, Voilà switched to the GSM telecommunications platform, justas Jamaica-based Digicel appeared on the scene as a rival GSM operator.By then there were 500,000 mobile phone subscribers in Haiti and mobile phonesalready outnumbered landlines by three to one.During the early days, connecting voice calls between the different mobile networksoperating in Haiti was virtually impossible, partly because each one used a differenttechnology platform.However, when Natcom launched its GSM network in September 2011 it signed aninter-connection agreement with Digicel. Making calls between the two networks hasbeen easy ever since.Digicel acquired Voilà in March 2012. It subsequently announced plans to completethe migration of all Voilà subscribers to its own network in October 2012.Haiti’s once had a fourth mobile network, Haitel, which used CDMA mobiletechnology.161