Regulator imposed Telecom blackout in Haiti

From: "Sheila L." <epublic@hotmail.com>
To: editor@isoc.org, heath@isoc.org, lpress@isi.edu, thomas.frankl@itu.int,
        victoria.knight@itu.int
Cc: sehil.benyekkou@itu.int, courrier.auditeurs@rfi.fr,
        guedon@ere.umontreal.ca, international@lemonde.fr, redac@lemonde.fr,
        interactif@lemonde.fr, multimedia@liberation.fr,
        etranger@liberation.fr, fiere@liberation.fr, latrive@liberation.fr,
        pimienta@funredes.org
Subject: Urgent: Regulator imposed Telecom blackout in Haiti
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:29:29 PDT

Dear Andree Navarro,
Dear Andy Bush,
Dear Jean Claude Guedon,
Dear Daniel Pimienta,
Dear Larry Press,
Dear friends,

This message is an SOS: as of September 27, 1999 the first and largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Haiti (ACN, Alpha Network Communications) has closed, as a result of a decision of CONATEL (the National Council of Telecommunications, an organization of regulation).

CONATEL holds it against the Internet that the telephone company, TELECO (a state-owned enterprise) experiences a loss of profit on international calls. The excuse to carry out this brutal, arbitrary closing, without notice and without decision by any court is that a disconnected microwave antenna would have been found in the buildings of ACN, which could possibly be used for diverting the traffic of international phone calls of TELECO. At once CONATEL unplugged the Cisco connected to the ACN satellite antenna, hence deprived of access 80% of the Haitian Internet users.

Despite the numerous calls on the national level pleading the continuity of services, despite the refutation of the CONATEL arguments made by RDDH (the Haitian Network for Sustainable Development), CONATEL has remained inflexible and it has one sole motto: "We are a sovereign State, we do what we want, and no company can shelter behind its customers". Here it has to be stressed that the measures chosen by CONATEL violate the telecommunications law in force in Haiti. The conditions for the authorization to resume service are equally illegal.

The situation is currently at a standstill because, according to CONATEL, the order to disconnect ACN came from the President of the Republic. In addition, the Public Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communication (parent ministry of CONATEL) admits it is not competent to arbitrate this dispute which is actually nothing less than a sentence of death for ACN as a company. Please note as well that the other 3 ISPs all together do not have today the bandwidth to meet the demand. Also, since the telephone company has never granted dedicated lines to ACN, the ACN network has been developed on the spread spectrum (radio waves), which implied for each of its customers an investment of US$ 6,000.00.

The other ISPs offer a waves system which is not compatible with the ACN's one; closing ACN would then boil down to a dead loss for the customers of the company, which provides access to the universities, the libraries, the Public Archives, the schools, the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, the RDDH (Haitian Network for Sustainable Development), the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) and for a great majority of the private companies in the country, such as various banks. Very few customers of ACN have been able to spend US$ 10,000.00 to connect to another ISP.

Today, October 12, 1999, their networks all are saturated. Presently, the director of CONATEL is attending TELECOM 99, the meeting of the ITU.

We call for the support and the solidarity of all Internet users, of the actors and actresses of the network, so that:

• 80% of the Haitian Internet users could be connected again as soon as possible,
• the problem be publicly addressed, during TELECOM 99, to the Director of CONATEL, Mr. Ceant.

Please use all the means you have: the net, the media, the telephone, your friends --whether they are influential or not. We need an international echo. We are powerless without you, dear Internet users: broadcast the message, translate it if necessary. Help us.

Internetly yours,

Internetamente,

Sheila Laplanche