Arias' Campaign Message Calls Criticized
Presidential candidate Óscar Arias Sánchez is surrounded by criticism over a practice in place by his campaign staff, using cellular phones and voicemail to promote his candidacy.

Owners of cellular phones are complaining that they are getting calls from the Arias campaign, soliciting their support.

Some have Complained to the Instituto Costarricende de Electricidad (ICE) - the telephone company - since their numbers are restricted and very few people have it.

Many believe that this form of invitation of privacy is form of disrespect. The callers are not forewarned of the the content of the message, they simply get a recorded message by Arias.

And to make matters worse, those that do not answer the call, need to incur the cost of retrieving the message from the their voicemail. If a cellular telephone is turned off or a call cannot be answered, the call is automatically routed to the voicemail and the cellular subscriber needs to pay for the retrieval of the message.

The cost to receive the message is ¢30 colones (us 6 cents) per minute, which is a small amount, but when you multiply that by 950.000 - the number of cellular subscribers - it adds up to for the phone company.

A spokesperson for the Arias campaign said the calls and messaged will continue for the next 15 days.

According to Geovanny Bonilla, the legal director at ICE, the telephone company has not given anyone access to their database. "After an analysis by out technical staff, it appears that the calls are being made by dialing the numbers in sequence based on the prefix", explained Bonilla.

All cellular services begin with a 3 for TDMA and 8 for the GSM bands and have. To make calls sequentially, one has to begin with say the 399 prefix and then dial sequentially beginning with 0000 to 9999.

Given the large number of messages handled by the voicemail service, ICE is looking at ways to stop these calls to eliminate an over-saturation of the system.

Rodrigo Arias Sánchez, brother of Oscar and chief campaign manager, says that the calls don't break any privacy rules. The messages are short - from 15 - 17 seconds - and should pose no problem for the telephone system.

"The subscriber has the option to hang up when they hear Oscar's voice and it cost them nothing. And the voicemail message doesn't interrupt normal activity since it goes directly to the mailbox", said Rodrigo in defending the action.

He added that this is a new in Costa Rica and is being used in the United States without any problems. For his part, Oscar Arias recognizes that some people have complained about this type of call and the new system used by his brother, however, the calls will continue.