HAITI Media and Telecoms Landscape Guide - Infoasaid

164Impact of the 2010 earthquakeThe 2010 earthquake permanently knocked out half of Haiti’s lines, but the mobilenetworks were quick to recover.Former Digicel Chief Executive Maarten Boute told a meeting on disaster responseat the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2012 that the Digicelnetwork was up and running again after three days.However, Boute acknowledged that it took about two weeks for the most of thepopulation to realise that they could use their mobile phones once more.Following the earthquake, Digicel gave US$5 of free mobile credit to all itssubscribers so that survivors could contact their family and friends or seek help.But Boute said this move nearly caused the network to collapse under a suddenincrease in the volume of calls.He noted that most Haitians normally spend about $1 per week on mobile air timeand use this money sparingly, but the free credit allowed them to all get on thephone at once.In future emergencies, Boute said, it would be wiser to drip feed smaller amounts ofcredit to subscribers in several instalments over a period of time to avoid a repeat ofsuch congestion.The internet and social mediaSocial media played an important role in the dissemination of information in thehours that followed the 2010 earthquake.Even though Haiti’s internet servers were inoperative for about a week, theBlackBerry network still worked and people used this.The popularity of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter is growing fast.According to the internet analysis website www.socialbakers.com , there were411,000 Facebook users in Haiti in September 2011.The overwhelming majority were men under the age of 35.164