Haiti's State Phone Company Finally Privatized

[Judi Lynn]

Haiti's State Phone Company Finally Privatized
Written by Hervé Jean Michel
Tuesday, 18 May 2010 19:07
Source: Haiti Liberte

The Haitian government sold a 60% share of the country's national telephone company, Teleco, this month to the Military Telecom Company, known as Viettel, a subsidiary of the Vietnamese Army, based in Hanoi. Teleco now no longer belongs to the Haitian people. The new private company which owns all of Haiti's land-lines will be called Natcom.

Teleco was the crown jewel of Haiti's state enterprises, but was sold for the fire-sale price of $59 million.

On April 29 Viettel directors were in Port-au-Prince where the deal, reached days before the Jan. 12 earthquake, was consummated. Representing the Haitian government at the signing ceremony were Haitian officials like Yves Bastien of the Council for the Modernization of Public Enterprises (CMEP), Charles Castel, the Governor of Haiti's Central Bank (BRH), and Michel Présumé, Teleco's director.

"Teleco sustained permanent attacks, its network was sabotaged on several occasions, and the situation was not sustainable," Castel said in a statement after signing away the company. (In past years, Teleco union leaders have charged that President René Préval's government has deliberately undermined efforts to modernize equipment and improve service in the company to force its privatization.)

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2497-haitis-state-phone-company-finally-privatized

[Mika]

1. There's only one word that I can think of that describes Haiti's treatment.

Rape.

:( :( :( :(

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[EFerrari]

3. That's the word that comes to mind for me, too. n/t

[Mika]

5. The school system now too!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x37218

Its maddening!

:cry:

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[Mika]

2. A kick to help connect some dots.

World Bank cancels remaining Haiti debt
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x37171

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[rabs]

4. The Vietnamese Army?

In this May 18 photo, Vietnamese engineers are seen working inside the Teleco in Port-au-Prince. Haiti's state-run telephone company is limping into service after the earthquake, aided by a distant investor: Vietnam's military-owned Viettel. - ap

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Got curious about Viettel and found below in The Gleaner of Jamaica. Article sort of praises and slams just about everybody.

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Before the quake, Teleco was a corruption-gutted, money-haemorrhaging albatross. Fewer than two per cent of Haitians had service from its landline monopoly, while Teleco's high-speed data network was minuscule.

And while it controlled the wireless spectrum, it had no competitive cellphone service.

That makes one company's decision to buy a majority stake in Teleco and commit to resuscitating it so remarkable.

That company, Viettel, is run by communist Vietnam's military.

~~~~ Florida connection ~~~~~

Viettel also committed to laying a new submarine cable to Florida and to repair a quake-damaged undersea link with the Bahamas that Teleco never put into service.


~~~~~~~~~~~~ U.S. sleaze ~~~~~~~~~~

Teleco's director of international relations from 2001 to 2003, Robert Antoine, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Miami in March to receiving more than US$350,000 in bribes from two US telecom companies in exchange for secretly negotiated preferential rates.

The sleazy dealings even reached into US politics.

Former US Representative Jim Courter of New Jersey quit as a finance co-chair of Senator John McCain's GOP presidential campaign in 2008 shortly after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined the telecom company he then headed, IDT Corp


~~~~~ Venezuela connection ~~~~~

Company engineers are also about to embark on a project laying fibre-optic cable in socialist Venezuela, according to that country's state-run telecommunications company, CANTV.

~~~~~ Cuba connection ~~~~~~~~

The 18 or so Viettel engineers who came to Port-au-Prince in April share a rented house and a pair of two-bedroom apartments, he says. And to further keep costs down, Bastien added, they plan to employ about 50 Cuban engineers.

http://mobile.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100528/business/business3.php

[Judi Lynn]

6. Thanks for adding this. Looking forward to reading this tonight. Viettel sounds interesting.

Best wishes to them. They've GOTTA be cleaner than so many others we know of.