ICE Will Not Award
Chinese 3G Contract
The Instituto
Costarricense de
Electricidad (ICE)
decided not to award the
contract for 1.5 million
3G cellular lines to the
Chinese firm, the only
bidder, however,
promising that users
will have the
technologly available as
scheduled for later
2009.
Last month, Nokia,
Continez, Siemens
Network Costa Rica, ZTE
Corporación (Samsung)
and Ericsson de Costa
Rica, all bowed out and
left Huawei Technologies
Costa Rica, as the only
bidder for the 3G
contract, coming it at
us$538 million dollar,
more than double the
estimated us$225 million
ICE had budgeted.
Costa Rican president,
Oscar Arias, sent a
letter to the ICE board
of directors urging the
public institution not
to award the bid to the
Chinese and begin a new
licitation for the
urgently needed cellular
lines.
According to ICE
president, Pedro Pablo
Quirós, the decision fornot awarding the
contract to the Chinese
was not
motivated by the Arias
letter.
The Huawei proposal included
a number of items that
were not in the ICE bid,
thus elevating the price
of the contract,
according to Quirós.
Another point of
contention by ICE was
the request by Huawei
for a 15% deposit on the
contract, while ICE had
made it clear that all
payments for the
purchase were to in
arrears.
Notwithstanding the
setback, Quirós assures
that ICE will have the
3G network in operation
by the end of 2009, as
had been planned and
ready to compete in an
open market now that the
telecommunications
monopoly has come to an
end with the approval of
the Telecommunications
law last month.
Costa Rica has been
without GSM cellular
lines for more than a
year, and the list of
subscribers for the
service keeps growing
into the tens of
thousands.
Claudio Bermúdez,
subgerente de
Telecomunicaciones del
ICE, said that ICE,
faving the coming of
competition, will now go
into plan "B", which
could include the
expansion of the current
GSM networks to provide
lines in the short term
and then make an initial
purchase of 750.000 3G
lines and two additional
purchases of 375.000
lines each in the near
future.
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