ICE Will Refund Deposit
on TDMA Lines
The Instituto
Costarricense de
Electricidad (ICE)
announced yesterday that
it will refund the
¢12.500 colones deposit
to all its TDMA
customers once it begins
to remove the lines from
the market next year.
The withdrawl of the
service will affect
400.000 users.
ICE says that the
deposit can be applied
to the purchase of a new
GSM line or customers
can have their money
back.
ICE has decided to
remove all the TDMA
lines from service and
make way for the newer
and more advanced
cellular technology
known as 3G. Current GSM
customers of the Alcatel
and Ericsson networks
will not be affected.
ICE president,Pedro
Pablo Quirós, said he
expects the removal of
all TDMA lines to take
two years and that the
Autoridad Reguladora de
Servicios Públicos (Aresep)
has yet to set the
tariff for the 3G
service.
"There is no hurry, we
will make the change
over time", said Quiros.
ICe will be investing
us$225 million dollars
in the third generation
of cellular service
which it expects to have
1.5 millio lines
operational by mid 2009,
in its move to gear up
for competitors that are
expected to be operating
in the country in the
coming two years.
Forcustomers with TDMA
phones they will be
asked to hand over their
units to ICE who will be
in charge of disposing
the units without
endangering the
environment.
Quiros said that
cellular telephones
contain toxic materials
like cadmium, lead and
mercury that are
dangerous to health if
not treated correctly.
The ICE president was
emphatic that the
institution will not buy
the units. "There will
be no payment and no
consideration to that
has been given", said
Quiros.
In the annoucement, no
mention was made of
compensating those
customers who put up a
¢60.000 deposit years
back when the exchange
rate as ¢250 colones to
a dollar and now is more
than double that, when
in the early years of
the introduction of
cellular service to
Costa Rica, ICE offered
only TDMA lines and
required a ¢60.000
colones (us$240 at the
time) deposit.
When the institution was
forced into lowering the
deposit to ¢25.000 and
then ¢12.500 it never
adjusted down the
deposit, taking benefit
of the higher amount and
the changing exchange
rate to the detriment of
its customers.
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