Vietnamese telco Viettel has revealed that its subsidiary in Haiti, National Telecom (Natcom) 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 launching a GSM/3G cellular network from scratch, whilst Natcom is also replacing and expanding the ruined fixed line network of the former Teleco to provide national services including DSL broadband access.

In its announcement the 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.