ICE Begins Bid Process For New Cellular Network
Costa Rica will soon have a new cellular network, a new network in addition to the existing two - TDMA and GSM. The new network is called "3G" and could be available as early as next year, as ten companies expressed interest yesterday at the opening of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) tender process.

ICE says it will aquire some 1.5 million of the new generation lines, addition to the existing 1.5 million cellular lines already in operation - 500.000 TDMA, 400.000 GSM lines installed by Alcatel and 600.000 GSM lines installed by Ericsson.

The new generation of phones offer cellular subscribers more options and services, like extended multimedia capabilities that can transfer and download movies, in addition to text and voice messaging. The new generation also has the capacity to capture television signals, though it is unsure if ICE will offer all the services available by the technology.

The process of finding a new cellular service provided began last month when last December ICE ran out of the 600.000 GSM Ericsson lines that went on sale the year earlier. Demand was greater than ICE had forecast and the country has once again gone back to the old times of not being able to meet the demand for cellular service.

And despite the fact that ICE has almost 200.000 lines of the older TDMA technology, customers are wanting the newer type of cellular service that allows a variety of features not found in TDMA.

Geovanny Bonilla, legal advisor and spokesperson for ICE, says the Institution is searching for the supplier that offers the best technology and service to better its mobile services.

Bonilla added that ICE is now acting more cautiously and within stricter guidelines following the scandals of the past where bribes and payoffs of ICE officials were the norm in the tendering process. Currently, a number of ICE officials and officials of the French telecommunications company, ALCATEL, and a former president of the country are under investigation for corruption in the tendering of the 400.000 GSM lines installed by Alcatel.

The Alcatel contract was terminated last week by the ICE board of directors because the network continues to experience failures in coverage, as customers continually complain to the Institution of not being able to receive or place calls. ICE decided to take over the maintenance of the network installed by Alcatel.

Bonilla explained that one of the conditions for the contract for the new service is that the chosen supplier have the capacity to help the Institution offer a solution to the current problems experienced. ICE says it will not discard the TDMA or GSM networks, but rather is looking for help in getting these networks working properly.

Iván Flores, director of the División de Redes y Sistemas del ICE, explains that the 3G network is known as the "wide band" which much more capacity for services than GSM. 3G offers, in addition to multimedia services, high speed internet.

Costa Rica will be the first Central American country to offer this technology. Japan has had 3G since 2001, while Europe went to 3G in 2002.

Among the companies interested in contract are: Siemens, Lucent, Ericsson, Hunaei, Marubeni, Cisco Systems, GBM, Nokia, Telecel and Unysis.


What is 3G?
3G (or 3-G) is short for third-generation technology. It is used in the context of mobile phone standards. The services associated with 3G provide the ability to transfer simultaneously both voice data (a telephone call) and non-voice data (such as downloading information, exchanging email, and instant messaging). In marketing 3G services, video telephony has often been used as the killer application for 3G.

Worldwide roll-out of 3G networks was delayed in some countries by the enormous costs of additional spectrum licensing fees. In many parts of the world 3G networks do not use the same radio frequencies as 2G, requiring mobile operators to build entirely new networks and license entirely new frequencies; a notable exception is the United States where carriers operate 3G service in the same frequencies as other services. The license fees in some European countries were particularly high, bolstered by initial excitement over 3G's potential. Other delays were as a result of the expenses related to upgrading equipment for the new systems.

Japan and South Korea were relatively quick to adopt 3G, because their governments prioritize technological infrastructure development, and spectrum licensing fees are minimal.

The first country which introduced 3G on a large commercial scale was Japan. In 2005, about 40% of subscribers used 3G networks only, with 2G being on the way out in Japan. It was expected that during 2006 the transition from 2G to 3G would be largely completed in Japan, and upgrades to the next 3.5G stage with 3 Mbit/s data rates were underway.

The successful 3G introduction in Japan showed that video telephony was not the killer application for 3G networks after all. The real-life usage of video telephony on 3G networks was found to be a small fraction of all services. On the other hand, downloading of music found strong acceptance by customers. Music download services in Japan were pioneered by KDDI with the EZchakuuta and Chaku Uta Full services.

Technically, 3G networks are not IEEE 802.11 networks. IEEE 802.11 networks are short range, primarily internet access networks, while 3G networks are wide area cellular telephone networks which evolved to incorporate high-speed internet access and video telephony.

The most significant feature offered by third generation (3G) mobile technologies is the capacity to support greater numbers of voice and data customers — especially in urban centres — as well as higher data rates at lower incremental cost than 2G.

By using the radio spectrum in bands identified, which is provided by the ITU for Third Generation IMT-2000 mobile services, it subsequently licensed to operators. 3G uses 5 MHz channel carrier width to deliver significantly higher data rates and increased capacity compared with 2G networks.

The 5 MHz channel carrier provides optimum use of radio resources for operators who have been granted large, contiguous blocks of spectrum. On the other hand, it also helps to reduce the cost to 3G networks while being capable of providing extremely high-speed data transmission to users.

It also allows the transmission of 384kbps for mobile systems and 2Mbps for stationary systems. 3G users are expected to have greater capacity and improved spectrum efficiency, which will allow them to access global roaming between different 3G.