An announcement has been made in Costa Rica for a tender for a project to give rural communities mobile and fixed telephone coverage, with funding from the National Telecommunications Fund.
The National Telecommunications Fund (Fonatel) is endowed with payments for operating licenses awarded to telecom operators such as Claro and Movistar, and currently has $190 million to be used to promote access to quality, timely, efficient, affordable and competitive telecommunications services, for the inhabitants of areas of the country where the cost of investment for the installation and maintenance of infrastructure for the provision of these services is not financially profitable.
December 14 is the deadline for reception of offers, but it won´t be until late 2011 that the market will finally be open to competition.
The Superintendent of Telecommunications, George Miley, described the process of allocating frequencies and the scheduled. The frequencies should be awarded by April 2011, four months after offers are submitted.
"But by Miley's own estimates, companies will require at least 6 more months to be ready to offer their services to the public, so consumers will enjoy competition in the mobile market somewhere around December 2011”, reported La Prensa Libre.
By not presenting the changes to the terms and conditions, Sutel has further delayed the process.
October 21st was the deadline for publication in the official journal for the corrections ordered by the Comptroller General of the Republic.
"Regulations require that changes be reported at least 15 days before receipt of offers, originally set for November 5th," according to the article in Nacion.com.
SUTEL (Costa Rica's Telecommunications Regulator) council members must find time to meet and review the final version of the terms and conditions.
Press coverage on the subject suggests that three of the SUTEL council's members have more important things on their plate.
According to a report from Mónica Cordero Sancho in Elfinancierocr.com, George Miley, SUTEL president, said on Wednesday that some of his colleagues had met but that they had not managed to finalize the document for approval.
This week, the telecommunications superintendence (SUTEL) will publish preliminary bidding rules for opening the telephony market.
George Miley, president of the board at Sutel, explained that this document will be available at the website of the Public Services Authority (ARESEP) for an entire month.
Miley stated that “we won’t include strategic details such as a minimum bidding price, … the idea is that interested companies make additions and suggestions to the rules”.
The Telecommunications Superintendence was authorized by the Comptroller of the Republic to resume the process for auctioning mobile telephony frequencies.
This process was halted in January, as some legislators questioned the transparency of the bidding rules.
Congressmen argued if it was adequate to have law firm BLP involved in defining the bidding rules, as this firm represents some of the companies interested in the process.
Originally scheduled for February 5th, the bidding rules will be published one week later.
George Miley, from the Telecommunications Superintendence, explained they are concluding the final details of the bidding rules.
The official schedule states that technical bids will be opened on March 19th, economic bids on April 16th, and that the concession will be awarded on May 5th.
As the schedule for auctioning mobile phone frequencies is announced, experts warn of vices in the process.
A month ago, the Costa Rican Electricity Insitute (ICE) returned a number of radio frequencies for being auctioned between private operators. Experts are now questioning if this process was legally valid.
Others complain of technical limitations in how the frequencies will be distributed, and of the requisites being imposed on companies interested in the auction.
The bidding rules for getting a mobile telephony frequencies will be published on February 5th.
George Miley, president of the council of the Telecommunications Superintendent (Sutel), reported that the frequencies will be awarded on May 5th.
"Sutel will ask bidders to prove they are important companies. It will require 5 years of experience, presence in at least three countries and no less than 3 million phone subscribers", reported Nacion.com..