Communication Cellulaire d'Haïti, S.A. or (ComCEL), became known as the trademark Voilà, was a

telephone company A telecommunications company is a kind of electronic communications service provider, more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many t ...

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

which primarily dealt in

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

service. It was a subsidiary of US-based Trilogy International Partners.

History

Comcel was awarded a license to construct and operate a nationwide TDMA mobile communications network in September 1998. A year later, in September 1999, Comcel launched commercial service in

Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( ; ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Haiti, most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The me ...

, and had developed the largest mobile phone coverage area in Haiti. Comcel, at the same time, was also granted the right to build and operate

payphone A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone or pay telephone or public phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic public areas. Prepayment is required by inserting coins or tel ...

services and planned to have over 500 phones in Port-au-Prince and

Jacmel Jacmel (; ) is a commune in southern Haiti founded by the Spanish in 1504 and repopulated by the French in 1698. It is the capital of the department of Sud-Est, 24 miles (39 km) southwest of Port-au-Prince across the Tiburon Peninsula, and ...

by year-end, with expansion to other provinces in 2006. In 2002, Comcel was granted the right to operate an international gateway and began carrying international calls in August of that year. In August 2005, Comcel received a license to operate a nationwide

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

network that launched on October 21 with nationwide coverage under the Voilà GSM brand, which has become its trade name since. In 2009, Comcel received the

U.S. Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

Award for Corporate Excellence (Multinational). The company's services temporarily came to halt following the 12 January

2010 Haiti earthquake The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic Moment magnitude scale, magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake that struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. The epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, Ouest (departm ...

. While the company's facilities were not seriously affected by the earthquake, 5 of its 575 employees had died and 35 remained missing The company was sold to

Digicel Digicel is a Jamaican-based Caribbean mobile phone network and home entertainment provider operating in 25 markets worldwide. Digicel has operated in several countries, including Guyana, Fiji, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Samoa, St. Lucia, Surinam ...

group on March 30, 2012 and ceased to operate independently on October 12, 2012.

References

External links

Article de bonzouti.com sur Comcel Haiti
{{Caribbean mobile phone companies 1998 establishments in Haiti 2012 disestablishments in Haiti Telecommunications companies established in 1998 Mobile phone companies of Haiti