Racsa Close To
Breaking Away
From Its Parent
ICE
The possibility
of the
Radiográfica
Costarricense
S.A. (Racsa)
breaking away
from its parent,
the Instituto
Costarricense de
Electricidad
(ICE), may be
around the
corner, with the
call by
Presidenta Laura
Chinchilla, to a
meeting of
representatives
of bot companies
for next week.
Racsa has been
and continues to
be an arm of
ICE, providing
internet
services with
more than
100.000
customers. But,
it does not have
its own board of
directors and
the direction of
the company is
entirely up to
the ICE board of
directors, which
owns 100% of the
company's
shares.
With the
existence of
Racsa, ICE is
competing with
itself, a it
also offers
internet
services,
although it
restricts its
activity to ADSL
and mobile
internet, while
Racsa offers
dial up internet
and in
partnership with
cable companies,
cable internet.
A decade ago
internet
services in
Costa Rica was
only available
through Racsa,
as ICE
concentrated on
telephone
communications
and energy.
In the decade
and with the
growth in
internet demand
and capacity,
Racsa has grown.
Recently the ICE
owned company
announced an
investment plan
of us$360
million dollars
to improve its
internet
network,
offering high
speed
connections at
low prices and
will soon be
breaking into
the "virtual
cellular
network" market.
If Racsa's plans
for the Virtual
Cellular Network
become a
reality, it
would make it a
clear competitor
to ICE.
A Virtual
Cellular Network
allow many
terminals with
bursty traffic
to access a
fixed
communications
infrastructure,
using radio
communication. A
VCN does not use
a conventional
cellular
frequency reuse
concept. In a
VCN, each
terminal sends
packets using
the entire
system bandwidth
while any nearby
port can pick up
the signal.
Then, the ports
relay the
packets to the
port server (PS)
over a fixed
(wired) network.
Ports can be simple radio receivers as they do not have to support the
same
functionality as
conventional
cellular base
stations. The
performance is
investigated in
terms of
probability of
capture,
throughput and
delay. Despite
its simplicity
this network has
a larger user
capacity than
conventional
cellular reuse
patterns. |
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