ICE Tries to Combat Cable Theft
The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) - the state monopoly on telecommunications and electrical power - has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of cable theft, which has left thousands without telephone and/or electrical service, while costing the institution.

Two of the various solutions applied are to greasing up the posts holding cables or line or cover them with razor wire.

Glauco Quesada, coordinator of telecommunications security at ICE, that greasing the posts has produced positive results. However, the same cannot be said for the razor wire, because thieves cut the wire and got to the cables just the same.

In other communities, ICE, has placed alarms on the posts in so that they warn residents who will call police. However, though that solution works, according to Quesada, there have been problems where residents where met by gunfire when they responded to the alarms.

Quesada explained that since 2003, when the theft of cable became a real problem, there have been many ideas to protect the property of the institution. However, all the ideas have been overcome by the overzealous thieves.

Geovanni Bonilla, a spokesperson for ICE, said that in one instance they coordinated with a local television station to keep an eye on the cables with their cameras, whoever, some thieves took over with the cables and the cameras.

The institution says it has lost some ¢1.4 billion colones (us$2.7 million dollars) to cable theft since 2003.

That amount, according to Bonilla, is the cost of the cable, the replacement and the man hours used for the reinstallation and the lost billing for the loss of connection.

The cables most preferred by the thieves are those contained copper.

However, thieves are just stealing cables off the posts, they are now also attacking cellular telephone stations.