Comptroller Blames ICE, ICE Blames Ericsson, While Customers Continue To Suffer
The finger pointing has begun and while there is no clear culprit, customers of the new GSM cellular network have to pay the price for the bad to lousy service experienced.

Last week the Contraloría General de la República (Comptroller's office) blamed the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), the state monopoly on telecommunications, for having accepted a deficient cellular network from the Ericsson company.

ICE then turns around and blames Ericsson, which shakes off the accusation and denies responsibility in the problems encountered with the 600.000 GSM lines.

Gilberto Mata, marketing manager for Ericsson, said that last December 5, Ericsson delivered to the state institution a cellular network designed for 600.000 customers ready and operational. The problems encountered by ICE customers are squarely the fault of ICE and its inability to complete its part of the work, like installing all the radio transmitter towers, according to the Ericsson official.

Mata added that of the 339 radio transmitter bases that make up the network, only 16 were in operation at the time of delivery. ICE was responsible for the installation of the transmitters and failure was mainly due to the inability of the state institution to negotiate the land purchase for the placement of the towers and transmitting equipment.

To help out ICE, Mata added that Ericsson has leased out the land for many of the radio towers and since last November is paying the rent for the land where the radio towers are installed, in the waiting that ICE solves its problems.

Meanwhile, cellular customers of the "new" network have experienced coverage problems, dropped calls, lost calls and adding insult to injury, billing problems.

ICE announced this past week that customers of the "new" cellular network will be billed every 22 days, instead of the usual 30 days, to allow the institution to play catch up for its inability to bill the first few months of service. The shortened billing period is to make the payments easier on the customers, ICE said last week.

According to Ericsson, they have complied with all the requirements of the contract and the problem with the network is squarely the fault of ICE. Mata says that the network that Ercisson delivered, based on the contractual arrangement, has the capacity to handled 500.000 calls per hour during peak times (7am to 8pm) which generates the institution some ¢20 million colones in revenue during each peak hour.

The problem, according to Mata, is that in some area and at certain times, the number of calls exceeds the networks' capacity.

Mata concluded his statement saying that the installation and maintenance of a cellular network is a arduous and complex task. Ericsson has complied with it commitment and will continue to work so that Costa Rica can enjoy an excellent cellular network, but the problems faced by the users are clearly the problems of the state institution who is buckling under the pressure of the unexpected demand for cellular service.