Cellular Service To
Experience Interruptions All Week
If your cellular phone is not working well today, or the rest of
the week for that matter, blame it all on the Instituto
Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) - the sole provider of cellular
service in the country.
ICE says that it will be doing upgrade and maintenance work on its
cellular network between today and February 22 and it could cause
interruptions in the service, both in placing and receiving calls,
as well as for text messages.
Elberth Durán said that the institution will be carrying out the
work between 6pm and 8am when network traffic is low.
The work is being carried out in the the Gran Área Metropolitana (GAM)
- San Jose, to install more equipment to make more cellular lines
available next month.
In December, ICE made available 60.000 GSM lines, in January 100.000
and this month another 100.000 lines and 100.000 next month.
However, the majority of those lines are already spoken for, as ICE
is connecting only those customers who have already applied and are
on the waiting list. If you are one of those, you can check your
waiting status on the ICE website at:
Durán added that the service interruption will not last any more
than 20 minutes at any one time and will only affect the GSM
networks.
The subgerente de Telecomunicaciones del ICE, Claudio Bermúdez, to
better servive, later this year the Alcatel and Ericsson GSM
networks will be unified adn by the end of the year, maybe, 3G
network will be working as well, which would add another 900.000 new
cellular lines and end the waiting for the lists.
In addition, in the coming year there could be other operators
providing competition to ICE for cellular and internet service, now
that the Ley General de Telecommunicaciones is a reality and the
newly created SUTEL - telephone regulatory body - is studying
various proposals from operators like Movistar and Telefonica. |
