Vietnamese telco Viettel has revealed in a press release that its subsidiary in Haiti, National Telecom (Natcom, formerly Teleco), successfully completed its first international voice calls over its new Haitian mobile network – so far with five active base stations – with ‘international standard quality’ connectivity demonstrated in a link-up with Vietnam in late December 2010.

The news came less than four months after work began on rolling out a GSM/3G cellular network from scratch, whilst Natcom is also replacing and expanding the ruined (and obsolete) fixed line network of the former Teleco to provide national services including DSL broadband access. In its announcement the military-owned parent company added that Natcom had also made successful domestic test calls over both its new fixed fibre-optic and mobile networks.

Natcom, which has yet to interconnect its new networks with Haiti’s other telecoms operators, expects to launch commercial mobile services over a network of 1,000 base stations later in 2011. TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database notes that on 1 September 2010 Viettel officially took control of the Haitian PSTN operator when all assets, rights and obligations of Teleco were transferred to Natcom, 60% owned by the Vietnamese investor, with 40% controlled by Haiti’s government.