ICE puts the brakes on RACSA’s expansion
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) put the brakes on the expansion plans by Radiográfica Costarricense (RACSA) – a subsidiary of ICE – to invest millions in internet service, to stop the competition.
RACSA had plans to invest us$300 million dollars in a fibre optic network that would permit 360.000 internet connections to residential and commercial customers. The fibre optic network would provide wide band service of up to 20Mbps.
Notwithstanding, the president of ICE, Pedro Pablo Quirós, Racsa will be stopped from competing with the institution and there is no need for RACSA to have its own fibre optic network.
“Imagine the ridicule, doing this ‘A La Tica’ (Costa Rican way of doing things), RACSA digs trenches and then after they close them, we come along to add things to it, duplicating everything”, said Quirós.
ICE currently has a fibre optic network providing a connection of up to 4Mbps, much lower than that proposed by RACSA.
The RACSA expansion plan was approved by its board of directors, of which Quirós is a member, last October 17 and includes an investment of us$100 million dollars in a data centre and another us$100 million dollars in applications and value added services.
Quirós was emphatic that RACSA should concentrate on value added services and applications and has no need for a separate fibre optic network.
The ICE president added that the institution is evaluating the transfer of RACSA’s 20.000 internet client to it, adding that it would be done as part of a process of restructuring, however, no details on the plan are yet concrete.
The president of RACSA, Róger Carvajal, has yet to offer comment on the plans by the parent company. Although some 300 Racsa employees sent a letter to ICE questioning the validity of the plan to take away internet from RACSA.
Quirós, like a hardnosed parent, said that ICE is preparing a proposal where RACSA will be told “this is what we want and the way we want it”.
The plan is expected to be present to RACSA on December 15.
