Digicel Group Acquires Voila, leaving Haitian consumers with no protection

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.

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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.

There are many ways you can deal with your competition.

You can fight head to head with the competition. How? You can do it the right way by either lower your prices or provide better products. However, both of these methods are expensive and require hard work.

Another way you can fight competition is to buy them out. Because this method is an easy way out where the consumer is often left without any protection and is subject to exploitation by these multi national companies, governments have established something called Anti-Trust laws, to protect their citizens against these heartless corporations.

What is anti-trust law?
According to Wikipedia: "Antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopoly) and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace.These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both, or generally to violate standards of ethical behavior. Government agencies known as competition regulators, along with private litigants, apply the antitrust and consumer protection laws in hopes of preventing market failure. The term antitrust was originally formulated to combat "corporate trusts," which were big businesses. Other countries use the term "competition law". Many countries including most of the Western world have antitrust laws of some form"
I assume this is not the case in Haiti.

Now that Digicel is responsible to set the prices of mobile phone services for Voila, what will prevent them from raising the price?

Let's say in a few Months you think it is too expensive to pay for a Digicel phone, where do you go?

As always, the Haitians are left to fan for themselves

"Nagé po nou soti"

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