Unwanted International Calls Out Can Now Be Blocked
Tired of paying for international calls you didn't make? Well, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) has a solution.

You can now call ICE and ask for a special code to make international calls. Without the code, the line is restricted.

ICE gets numerous complaints each month from customers who have international calls they did not make on their account. Most of these calls were made by the customer unwittingly. Actually, the calls were made by their computers and without their permission.

Surfing the internet while connected to a telephone line, like in the cases of dial up through Racsa or RDSI or ASDL offered by ICE, can run up long distance bills by some programs that take over the computer's modem port and dial a specified international call. The call terminates when the computer is shut down.

Most of these calls end up in places like Asia and Eastern Europe. Agreements between telephone companies allows the program generator to share in the cost of the per minute charges.

This practice generates large revenues for the originator of the computer program, but costly to users as ICE will not refund the calls and will terminate the customer's service if the bill goes unpaid.

The new service has a cost of ¢350 colones per month and customers need to dial 115 to set up.

In the alternative, you can request a complete block of international calls, but this would mean that you not only cannot make international calls, you cannot receive them as well.

Many foreign renters in Costa Rica face this problem as landlords restrict the calling privileges of their telephone line and ask the renter a large deposit or to make his or her own arrangements for a telephone line directly with ICE.