ICE Convicted For Poor Cellular Service
The Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (Aresep) - the regulator of public prices and services - ruled against the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) and ordered it to pay ¢2.937 colones to one of it's customers for providing poor cellular services when it turned on the new GSM network in 2003.

It took Allan Castillo two years of fighting with ICE and an appeal to the Aresep to get his problem resolved.

According to Castillo, he began to have problems with his voicemail after switching from the older TDMA service to the new GSM service. He said it took almost 24 hours to get a message on his voicemail.

Castillo also estimated that he lost 30% of his calls due to the systems operations and believed he should not pay for a service he did receive.

According to Aresep, during 2004 the regulating body received some 20.000 complaints by Costa Ricans of which 481 were investigated. One half of the complaints were against the AyA - the water and sewage institution, the other half against ICE.