Following the devastating earthquake which hit Haiti on January 12, the country is struggling to get its telecommunications services back in operation.
The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) operates the sole international submarine cable which…
Following the devastating earthquake which hit Haiti on January 12, the country is struggling to get its telecommunications services back in operation.
The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) operates the sole international submarine cable which connects directly to Haiti, and this system was severely disrupted in the quake. BTC has said that it is currently assessing the situation but cannot yet say when the service will be restored nor how long it will take to repair the systems.
There is also an undersea fibre optic cable system which links the capital, which was very close to the epicentre of the quake, to the Bahamas, which is in turn linked to the US mainland. This cable system is operated as a JV between Haitian operator Teleco and BTC. This cable system is also severely damaged.
The country has a lot of satellite reliant communications, though, due to telecoms services still being a rather recent item on the island, and most of these are still in order, as are most of the ISPs.
Operating voice services on the island are Teleco, Digicel Haiti, Comcel and Haitel, all of which have also suffered damages and are not working fully. Repairs could be a drawn out process due to the difficulty of getting to the island and moving around among the utter devastation.
The Haitian government is currently in the midst of selling off a 70% stake in the government owned Telecommunications d’Haiti (Teleco), for which it has received a bid from Vietnamese operator Viettel Corporation worth US$59m.
An assessment of this bid was due to take place on January 12.
