Haiti’s ISPs operational

Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), the operator of the only international submarine cable system directly connecting to Haiti, told TeleGeography that service into the island nation via the the Bahamas Domestic Submarine Network (BDSNi) was disrupted by the catastrophic earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12.

Haitian fixed line operator Teleco jointly controls the undersea fiber-optic link connecting Port-au-Prince to Matthew Town (Great Inagua Island) in the Bahamas, and from there to the United States.

The BDSNi, designed with a maximum 1.92Tbps transmission capacity, is used by Teleco alongside INTELSAT satellite infrastructure. It isn’t known how much of Haiti's traffic is routed via this cable. The Haiti-Bahamas link came online in December 2006, and much of Haiti’s international communications is reliant on satellites. 

Paulo Chilosi, who runs the Haitian ISP Multilink, told U.S. journalists on Jan. 14 that the Internet was the best channel for communication to and from Haiti in the wake of the earthquake, although the lack of electricity supply presented a major obstacle to getting online, with few individuals and organizations having access to solar panels or sufficient battery power.