No TMDA Cellular Service For Six Hours Yesterday Due to System Overload
Trying to send a text message yesterday? Or, perhaps, your better half or the love of your life did not respond? Well, don't blame them, blame the telephone company, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE).

For reasons yet not clear, the text messaging service in the the TDMA technology was down for more than six hours yesterday, collapsing in the morning and service restored by mid afternoon.

During this time telephone calls - both in and out - from the TDMA service as affected an many did not get through.

Orlando Cascante, director of mobile service at ICE, said that the collapse was due to an overload of text messages being sent yesterday. The TDMA technology can handle only 5 million text messages a day, the same number than can be handled by the other cellular network on the GSM technology.

All TDMA cellular phone numbers begin with the prefix 3, while GSM cellular numbers begin with 8.

Cascante added that yesterday's failure was unusual and under investigation. Normally during special holidays like Valentine's Day, Christmas, New Years and soccer games, the system becomes saturated and the collapse foreseen by ICE technicians>

There was no special event or holiday yesterday to have caused the failure.