The breakup of the communication monopoly held by the venerable Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) has had its share of supporters and detractors. Those who thought that all Ticos would celebrate the forced loosening of ICE’s tight grip on wireless communications were a bit surprised by the old-hat attitudes of a few who welcomed new competitors Claro and Movistar with suspicion and even a bit of contempt.

Before rushing to categorize ICE loyalists as archaic stalwarts who still talk about La Sele’s awesome performance at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, it helps to investigate where their sentiment comes from. Many Ticos are extremely proud of ICE’s history and role in the development of the country, and they should be. The seeds of what one day would become ICE were planted back in 1884, when San José became the first city in Latin America to install electrical street lighting. Even after divestiture, ICE is still the most profitable business conglomerate in the Central American region, bringing in about $5 million each day from its electricity, communications and data services.

Cuentos and Urban Legends

Once Claro and Movistar began operating in earnest, a few unhappy and tech-savvy Ticos took to the online social networks and engaged in the national pastime of embellishing reality through chain e-mails, Facebook updates and Twitter messages. Quite a few white lies and urban legends emerged therefrom; some outlandish, some laughable, and some worthy of further consideration. National newspaper La Nación did a pretty good job of debunking some of these myths:

– ICE is still a Costa Rican institution. It has not been sold in an auction to the highest bidder, nor has it been taken over by the 1% Illuminati Consortium that the Occupy Wall Street movement is trying to flush out in the United States.

– You Dial It, You Pay For It. This has not changed. Answering a phone call is still free to the lucky person who receives it. It’s still pretty cheap to call your friends, so don’t let this nice feature turn into a Mexican standoff just to see who calls first.

– The SUTEL (Superintendent of Communications) exerts price controls. The wireless carriers can’t charge more than the max set fees, which are currently 34 colones per minute for monthly plans, and between 34 and 40 colones for prepaid cell phone plans. How low can the mobile companies go? As low as they want, but not without approval from the SUTEL. This means that ICE cannot decide to one day charge 5 colones per minute just to send Claro and Movistar respectively packing to Mexico and Spain. Antitrust measures are firmly in place.

– Unlimited Wireless Broadband. The current data plans are priced according to the upload and download streams, not by the amount of data consumed. The SUTEL is considering amending this method of pricing, but not until a public hearing is on the matter convened. Until that day, Ticos can ownload as many songs and watch as many YouTube videos as they want without having to pay extra. As if the lies against the new wireless carriers weren’t caustic enough, Movistar’s web page in Costa Rica was unceremoniously defaced by a Tico hacker crew during the early hours of November 18. According to declarations made to La Nación by a Movistar spokesman,
the attack was negligible since it only affected one web page, and no wireless services were disrupted. It is unclear whether the attack by the hacker crew “Piratas de la Red” was motivated by some of the prevarications listed above.