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ICE says current phone rates are not enough to cover costs

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(ICR Archive / Courtesy)

July 29th, 2015 (ICR News) The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), which until 2009 also held a monopoly on both landline and cellular telephone service in the country, says that current rates for telephony services are not enough to cover the cost of providing the services, according to a statement sent to the press on Monday.

 

ICE said that the maximum rates allowed by telecoms regulator, SUTEL are “outdated,” and complained that the regulator has not updated its allowed maximum rates for years.

 

In the case of landline telephone service, which ICE describes as its most negative earner, the maximum basic rate is ¢3,389 per month.

 

In the case of prepaid mobile, which is provides under its “Kolbi” brand, SUTEL currently sets the ceiling rate between ¢34 and ¢40 per minute.  Post-paid mobile is capped at ¢34/minute.  Operators can charge less than these amounts, for instance as part of a mobile calling plan, but are not allowed to charge more.

 

Despite ICE’s claims, however, SUTEL reports that operators’ revenues witnessed record growth in 2014, up 38% from ¢293 billion to ¢405 billion – the largest increase since the telecom sector was opened to competition.

 

 

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  • MJ

    “current phone rates are not enough to cover costs.” Hmmmm, maybe due to the outrageous wages paid to employees who sit around and do nothing???

    • costarick

      You’ve got that right!!

      • Yeims

        Right on the money. as they say. I wish to hell someone here had taken Economics 101. They would have learned that monopolies are NOT good, and always lead to serious economic problems. These government monopolies have created aspects of a communist bureaucracy.

  • prdatki

    What needs to be done is fire the top 100 employees ,no retirement,nada, reduce the pay to 60 % and cut out the X mas bonus, after 6 months audit the rest and do some more cutting! It needs to be in the private sector as does the water company !

  • Joe1047

    My landline for my business has been down for almost 2 weeks. Took 4 phone calls over 4 days for the first visit which fixed nothing. Another 4 days for the next visit which got us connected again but very poor connection and internet is completely gone which was fine before. Still waiting for a fix. Best part is the new technician is an outside contractor who I spotted parked outside a bar at 4:00 in the afternoon while he is supposed to be at my place. These contractors are probably earning more than an ICE employee and so far have proved useless.

    • Joe1047

      As an update, we demanded an actual employee of ICE and in less than 1 hour everything was taken care of. If they are losing money, contractors is a good place to start.

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