After living in Costa Rica for a while now I have noticed that ICE and the telecommunications subject always has material to talk about, to be honest I have never seen a services company so unprofessional and yes childish is the word I find to describe it: the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad is like that misbehaved child every parent fears to raise.

 

The good thing is that with the implementation of the TLC (free trade agreement with USA) Costa Rica will have the monopoly and “reign of fear” set up by ICE removed and citizens will now be able to chose which telecommunications services company they want to work with: Hurray Costa Rica!

 

So far there are a total of 6 companies looking for a spot to compete with ICE: Ticom, Amnet, ICANN, WorldCOM, InterTel Worldwide and R&H Internacional Telecom these companies sent their offers to be reviewed by SUTEL a few months ago and now all of Costa Rica is patiently waiting to see what kind of changes they are going to experience with this. The ICE spokesperson has declared that they trust de fidelity of the Costa Rica people and believe that at least 90% of the current users will stay with ICE.

 

To be honest, I hear Costa Rica citizens so tired of putting up with ICE’s tantrums that I wouldn’t be so optimistic with those numbers, specially when they raise rates without any type of approval from the Costa Rica government and intimidate people with black outs and what not if they don’t get what they want.

 

Guanacaste for example could use a better offer of telecommunication services, the one we have right now is kind of mediocre and to be honest I know companies that would benefit a lot just offering better telecommunication services in Guanacaste alone.