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Wings
300.000 GSM Lines
Available December 17
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300.000 GSM Lines
Available December 17
The Instituto
Costarricense de
Electricidad (ICE)
announced yesterday that
it will begin offering
the first of the 300.00
GSM lines on December
17.
The lines are an
expansion of the current
Ericsson network.
The announcement was
made by ICE president,
Pedro Pablo Quirós,
rather than the usual
manager of mobile
telecommunications.
Quirós said that
customers on the waiting
list will have first
chance to purchase the
lines and then offered
to the general public.
Quirós added that as of
yesterday 250.000 lines
were already spoken for
(reserved) and that the
delivery of the lines
will be done in
chronological order.
Each ICE agency has the
capacity to connect
3.000 lines per day.
In addition to the
50.000 GSM lines that
have yet to be spoken
for, ICE has 40.000
lines of the older
technology known as TDMA.
However, like in the lat
delivery of GSM lines,
many TDMA customers
opted for the latest
technology, leaving some
100.000 TDMA lines
available.
GSM phones, unlike TDMA
phones, offer more
features like cameras,
MP3 sound, FM radio,
agenda, bluetooth and a
host of other
applications like
e-mail, video and image
transfers and
push-to-talk technology,
that is not offer by
ICE.
The addition of the
lines also meant an
expansion of the network
that included the
installation of 33 new
radio towers to improve
reception in areas like
Liberia, Limón, Nicoya,
San Pablo de Heredia,
Cartago and Alajuela
centre. In all, the
cellular network counts
with a total of 480
radio towers around the
country.
The cost of the 300.000
lines came to us$65
million dollars. The
Ericsson company
installed and made
available in December
2005 600.000 GSM lines.
All the lines were sold
out in less than a year,
when in October 2006,
ICE was back to where it
was years earlier,
having customers to wait
for cellular service
connection.
The current purchase,
contractually was made
by the Banco
Centroamericano de
Integración Económica (BCIE)
and ICE leases the lines
with an option to
purchase.
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Customers outside of the
ICE Pavas agency in
December 2005 waiting
for connection to the
600.000 GSM lines
offered by the
institution. |
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