Prepaid Telephone Services
in Costa Rica Is Still In "Veremos"
Prepaid cellular service in Costa Rica got another blow yesterday
when the Contraloría General de la Republica (Comptroller's office)
denied the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) approval to
completer a contract with Huawei Technologies.
The reasons for the denial were not made clear by late yesterday, as
ICE's spokesperson, Elbert Durán, said that the institution has to
still analyze the rejection notification.
The deal ICE has with China's Huawei was to provide some 2.5 million
"prepaid" lines for a total of us$10.1 million dollars. What got the
Contraloría's shorts in a knot was the fact that Huawei reduced the
contract price to us$6.4 million, leading officials to believe that
ICE did not analyze the contract well and it could have negative
results if approved as it is.
This is the second time the Contraloría has rejected a "prepaid
service".
The first time was last October when the Ericsson company asked
us$12.2 million dollars for the prepaid service, which was appealed
by Huawei, which appeal was supported by the Contraloría. Huawei was
then awarded the contract in December, subject to Contraloría
approval.
Yesterday's rejection means that Costa Ricans, as well as visitors
to Costa Rica, will have to wait before a prepaid service is
available, a service that is available in most other countries
around the world, including the poorest nation in Central America,
Nicaragua.
Costa Rica is also lagging behind in technology as most other
countries have already installed and offering the latest cellular
network, 3G, while in Costa Rica the process of awarding the 3G
contract was recently completed, in which Huawei, you guessed it,
was awarded the contract to install 950.000 3G lines for a price of
us$250 million dollars.
If there are no setbacks in that contract and process, the 3G
network would be operational by the end of this year, at which time
the older TDMA technology will be eliminated.
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