CaribPR Wire

Haitians Urge Donations So They Can Communicate With Their Loved Ones

 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti and NEWTON, Mass.,  Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ — GSMA Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain — Communication Cellulaire D’Haiti SA (Comcel), a leading communications provider in Haiti, offering mobile service as Voila, and MoreMagic Solutions, the provider of www.etopuponline.com, a portal for purchasing airtime for international mobile phones, have established a program for donations of airtime for mobile phones in Haitihttp://www.etopuponline.com/.  People in the United States, or worldwide, who wish to help, can purchase airtime that will become immediately available for a person in Haiti to make calls from their mobile phone.  This directed gift, or “TopUp”, allows the recipient to immediately make phone calls from the mobile phone.

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 Those who wish to help can login at www.etopuponline.com, click “TopUp Mobile Phone” on the menu on the left, select the country “Haiti”, the mobile operator “ComCEL (Voila)”, and enter one of these mobile numbers: 50934437802 or 50934410029, and the amount of the donation.  Payment can be made online with a verified PayPal account or a major credit/debit card.

 Donations are instantly credited to an airtime pool. Subject to certain conditions, any prepaid subscriber of Voila can text “SOS” to 321 from their own phone to receive US$1.00 (HTG 40) of airtime credit per request, free of cost, subject to availability of airtime in this pool.  Thousands of Haitians have already sent SOS messages; most have little or no credits on their phone, and are desperate to communicate.

 ”Within hours of the program announcement, thousands of Voila customers asked for airtime so they could call their relatives,” said Robin Padberg, General Manager of Comcel.  “Our customers appreciate the generosity of the worldwide community, as even a small donation allows Haitians to reconnect with their families at this critical time.” 

 ”Even as the mobile networks are restored, the Haitian people cannot afford to pay for their prepaid TopUp right now, and the few who can afford it do not know where to go, because so much of Haiti’s infrastructure has been destroyed,” said Pankaj Gulati, CEO, MoreMagic Solutions. “MoreMagic Solutions is making a sincere plea to individuals to help out at etopuponline.com, where the gift has an immediate and critical impact.”

 MoreMagic Solutions

With deployments in more than 60 countries worldwide, MoreMagic Solutions offers transaction platforms for mobile operators, financial institutions, content providers, and distributors, enabling consumers to purchase goods and services on demand using a mobile phone, POS, or web.  Through MoreMagic Solutions worldwide distribution, MNO-branded services are available for out-of-country customers, enabling communications with relatives back home, and increased usage on mobile networks worldwide.

 Comcel and Voila

Communication Cellulaire D’Haiti SA (Comcel) is a leading mobile telecommunications operator in Haiti, providing high-quality affordable wireless service under the Voila brand name.  Since its inception 10 years ago, over US$200 million has been invested in Haiti. For more information on Voila, please see its website: www.voilacomcel.com.  For more information on Comcel’s efforts to support earthquake relief, see http://www.voilacommunity.com/.  Comcel is a subsidiary of Trilogy International Partners LLC (Trilogy), based in Bellevue, Washington, which operates mobile communications companies in Bolivia, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and New Zealand.