ICE to sell 3,000 mobile lines Apr. 1

Costa Rica's electricity and telecoms monopoly (ICE) plans to resell 3,000 reclaimed mobile lines on Friday April 1, local newspapers reported. The lines are the first batch of 10,000 lines ICE cut off because of non-payment. Thousands of people were left empty handed after queuing for hours on Monday due to confusion about how ICE planned to sell off the mobile lines. ICE later clarified that it would only sell the lines to people registered on a waiting list, which can be done by going to ICE offices or calling in. The lines will be delivered according to numerical order of those on the list. The date for selling the next lot of lines is still to be determined. According to the ICE press office on Tuesday there are already 15,000 people registered for the 10,000 lines. ICE plans to sell 5,000 GSM and 5,000 TDMA lines. The country ran out of available mobile lines last December and has a backlog of thousands of interested subscribers. According to mobile services director Orlando Cascante, ICE opted for the waiting list method to avoid the chaotic queues that characterized the last mobile line auction in December. On that occasion 17,000 lines were sold over a day and half with some people queuing for as long as 10 hours. To qualify for the waiting list users must put down a deposit of 12,500 colones (US$26.7), provide utility payment receipts, a copy of their national identification card and a receipt showing the handset has been purchased. Costa Rica's comptroller recently approved a contract for Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY) to install another 600,000 GSM lines, and ICE also expects to begin selling the first 200,000 of these in October. In Costa Rica there are currently 944,000 mobile lines in service, of which 400,000 are GSM and 544,000 TDMA. With the Ericsson network there will be sufficient lines to serve 37% of the 4.5 million strong population.