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ICE To Send Bill To Verizon For
Losses To Its 113 Service
Once a upon a time, Costa Ricans
could pick up a telephone
directory to look up a number.
But that all stopped last year
when the Instituto Costarricense
de Electricidad (ICE) - the
state monopoly on
telecommunications - got into a
disagreement with Verizon, the
American company that had been
publishing the directory for a
number of years.
The disagreement was over the
publication of the regional
directory. ICE has always
insisted on one directory that
included all provinces, as it
had been published for years
before. Verizon, however,
decided to publish one directory
for the province of San José and
one for the provinces, saying it
had obtained the approval of ICE
officials, which was denied by
one and all at the Institución.
ICE directors decided to rescind
the Verizon contract and left
the country without a telephone
directory, forcing ICE to offer
the 113 - directory information
- service free to charge.
ICE did not willingly offer the
113 service free of charge. It
was ordered by the Autoridad
Reguladora de los Servicios
Públicos (Aresep) - the
government body that regulates
public prices and services - to
do so and beginning September 1,
2006, ICE will again begin to
charge for the directory
information service, as the
Aresep order expires on August
21, 2006.
ICE was ordered to provide the
service free of charge beginning
August 5, 2005.
Though no figures were given,
ICE has said it will send the
bill for the 113 service to
Verizon, who will be responsible
to compensate the Institución.
Claudio Bermúdez, a manager at
ICE, did say that during the
last six months, the 113 service
has been receiving some 3.9
millions calls monthly. Last
April, ICE installed a new
platform for its directory
information service at a cost of
us$17 million dollars, as the
old system had become
antiquated.
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