High cell phone rates in Costa RicaIt seems that ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) has no clue of what open market means and still tries to act as a monopoly. Costa Rica citizens joined together yesterday on strike to avoid sending text message since ICE decided to raise their rates from 1.50 colones to over 5 colones each text message besides all their rates for cell phones and land lines were raised unconsciously and without approval recently.

 

People are understandably mad about this and ICE claims they will no change this resolution no matter what since basically, they will either cut off some services or raise the rates. Costa Rica people are not dumb and they have established that either this changes or they will just wait for the new USA companies to settle and drop ICE entirely.

 

This entire situation with the phone rates in Costa Rica makes wonder: is ICE trying to squeeze as much money off citizens before real phone companies arrive or are they just stupid enough to continue thinking that their service is all there is? I really hope is the first choice, it would be very sad to see that they were just the stupidest company in Costa Rica.

 

So far, ARESEP has not been able to negotiate anything with ICE and phone rates skyrocketed this week, users all over Costa Rica are worried that they will not be able to afford these new phone rates at all and believe that something needs to be done as soon as possible.