The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) will buy 400.000 GSM phone lines from Ericsson Costa Rica.
Jaime Palermo, commercial director of the Institute, explained they have many 3G lines available for purchase, but clients prefer the GSM service, especially through pre-paid cards.
The companies announced that they will attack together some segments of the Central American market.
According to Ericsson's Phone Account manager, Mats Malmstrom, the company "expects an expansion of its Central and Latin American portfolio in 2009, in association with corporations such as Movistar, and offering solutions to users of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) ".
The Comptroller’s Office of the Republic ordered ICE to analyze if the price offered by Huawei Technologies would permit it to comply with the contract.
Esteban Oviedo in an article of Nacion.com writes: "The controlling institution revised the order passed last Monday, when they annulled the awarding of the contract to the Chinese company. This happened after the business lowered its initial price and offered a discount of almost 40% (of $3.7 million).
Chinese business has accumulated a total of $266 million in contracts with the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE).
With very aggressive pricing policies, Huawei has positioned itself in Costa Rica as the leader in the provision of networks and cellular telephone systems.
Ericsson will provide the 300 thousand GSM lines that will be put on sale in December.
The Swedish company presented its technical and financial offer on Wednesday, however it did not make public the dollar figure. In its proposal, it plans to deliver additional equipment in order to offer better quality service.
The partnership will allow Digicel to offer innovative mobile services to its subscribers in Panama and reinforces Ericsson's role as its preferred supplier in the region.
Under the agreement, Ericsson will be sole supplier of a GSM/EDGE network including radio access network, Mobile Softswitch Solution, mobile backhaul solution with optical and microwave products and Convergent Charging and Billing solution. Ericsson will also be responsible for network deployment, systems integration, and learning services. Deployment has already started.
Three appeals against the process for acquiring the equipment need for the system will delay the marketing of that technology.
Even though the contract to purchase of the equipment was awarded to Ericsson Costa Rica on July 7, they will not be able to make the purchase until October 2 when the motions are possibly resolved.
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