"Caos" For the Purchase of Cellular Lines
The craziness to get a cellular line began Monday night at 7:30pm, when authorized Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) agents began selling the new GSM cellular lines and a telephone.

Tuesday morning, thousands lined up outside ICE offices all around the country to connect to the new network of 600.000 GSM lines. Only 250.000 were made available on Monday, the rest will be available in March of 2006.

The lines at ICE offices formed from early in the morning and continued all day. ICE officials report that they are connecting (selling) lines at the rate of 1.000 per hour. At the end of closing yesterday 5pm, ICE says had sold 14.500 lines since the night before.

At that rate, the entire 250.000 lines will be sold out in about 10 days, when sales should increase at the rate of 25.000 per day.

Orlando Cascante, manager of mobile services at ICE, says that those who have made a request for a line will have until December 20 to connect, after that, the lines will open to anyone who requests one.

Many were visibly tired, waiting up to 3 and 4 hours in some ICE offices. With a telephone, a cedula and ¢12.500, the long wait in the glaring sun was worth it. Karla Solano, a young lady who waited 3 hours at the ICE Pavas office had a smile when she walked out with her cellular telephone working.

Not only are customers upset with the long waits, some of the 800 authorized ICE agents (retailers) had complaints as well, mainly that the system was too slow to respond to the demand, some agents did not have the correct password Monday night. Cascante says that ICE gives priority to its own staff request before that of the agents.

For the time being, TDMA customers cannot change to the new GSM network. They will have to wait until March, when ICE will allow a transfer of network while keeping the same telephone number.

The new GSM network, according to Cascante, is fully functional though it is short 9 radio towers. 330 of the 339 required were installed. With the other 9 ICE is having difficulty in negotiating for land for the towers.

Cascante says that the new GSM network installed by Ericcson company will work in office buildings and in 25 communities where there has been no cellular service. The GSM installed by Alcatel will often fail within office buildings and shopping centres.