Voila - Haiti Observer Blog

The competition in the mobile phone industry in Haiti has come to a sudden stop with the acquisition of Voila by Digicel. On Friday, March 30, 2012, it was reported that Digicel Group acquired Haitian mobile operator, Voila, from its parent company, US-based Trilogy International Partners. The amount was not specified.

My friend, we just witnessed the death of competition in the mobile phone industry in Haiti and you will pay a big price for this very soon.

What is the best thing for a business to do when it wants to control a market? Eliminate the competition.

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Voila, which was previously known as Communication Cellulaire d'Haiti, S.A. (Comcel) is a major telephone company that has been serving Haitians greatly for the past years. Though its operation was quite interrupted in 2010 due to a devastating earthquake, it pushed on and continued to provide its services to thousands of people who need them. Voila's success can be traced back to the year of 1998 when it received a license to build and operate a TDMA mobile communication network across the country. A year later, Voila, a subsidiary of American company Trilogy International Partners, started its commercial service in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Since that moment, it has continued an excellent operation until it achieved the largest mobile phone coverage in the country.

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Haiti's aim for socio-economic development has paved way for both local and international bodies and institutions to cooperate in providing the country and its people different means to attain this. Through technology, these entities have found various innovative ways to assist most especially the poor sector of Haitian society. The Mobile Money initiative, which was launched in the country last 2010 by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), continues to offer promising results.

The Haiti Mobile Money Initiative organized by the Gates Foundation has recently reached a five-million worth of transactions. This resulted in Digicel and Voila, two of the country's mobile network companies, sharing an award worth 3.2 million dollars for this milestone, which marks the final award of the initiative's ten-million-dollar incentive fund. The growing success of mobile money assists Haitians with a more practical and easier way through their mobile phones in taking care of monetary transactions as ninety percent of them do not have bank accounts. Aside from the HMMI, the government has launched two projects involving mobile money called "Aba Grangou" and "Ti Manman Cheri". The "Ti Manman Cheri", otherwise known as "Dear Little Mother", aims to help Haitian youth that are facing extreme poverty.

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