The Long Wait For Cellular Lines is Almost Over: Lines Go On Sale Dec 5
For those who have been waiting for a cellular telephone line, the wait has gotten shorter, now down to days, as the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) announced that Monday December 5, 250.000 new GSM lines will be made available.

The delay - the lines were to supposed to have been available in October - was due to the construction of all the radio towers and the delivery of the SIM chips that are in GSM telephones.

The complete network will have 600.000 lines, however, to catch the holiday market and the "Aguinaldo" - the annual bonus paid to all public and private sector employees - ICE decided to bring offer a portion of the lines now, filling a backed up demand that is estimated at 120.000.

The new GSM network will be somewhat different than the existing GSM network installed by Alcatel. The new network will include security features that will enable ICE to locate a particular telephone in the event of an emergency.

As well, the new network will be able to offer cellular customers comfort in the case the phone is lost or stolen. The network requires that the equipment associated with the cellular line be registered, rendering it useless - cannot be connected to the network - it is reported lost or stolen.

In the case of the existing GSM network, a cellular phone that operates on the ICE frequency can be connected no matter if it was stolen.

Another feature of the new GSM network will be ability to send multimedia files - movies, pictures and music - from one phone to another. New cellular telephones come with cameras to take photos, short videos and play MP3 music and now can be fully utilized.

The new 600.000 GSM cellular lines are being installed by the Ericcson company that will be in addition of the existing 400.000 GSM cellular lines and 500.000 TDMA lines.

Current GSM and TDMA customers will be able to switch to new network, without having to change their phone numbers, especially for TDMA customers, whose cellular phones are not technologically as advanced as GSM