Costa Rica information, activities and news
Matapalo Demm Marina Development was awarded the bid to rebuild Flamingo Marina in Papagayo Gulf, in the Costa Rican northwestern Pacific. The company made a commitment to invest $91 million in the first part of the project. Flamingo Marina had stopped operating on June 11, 2004, when the courts found that it did not meet regulations and that it was polluting. The new marina is expected to be fully operational in two years.
The Government ruled that casinos will operate only eight hours a day from now on and that players not be served free drinks. These are part of the restrictions to the 48 casinos operating in Costa Rica. Vice President Laura Chinchilla had no qualms in asserting that this is an activity which the state does not want to encourage, but rather restrict. The measures are aimed in part at fighting the addition to gambling, Ms Chinchilla added. The Minister of Tourism Carlos Benavides explained that, according to the new approach regarding casinos, they are considered as a supplemental activity for hotels and not business in themselves.
Today, Friday, April 18, Costa Rican residents and visitors will see bus prices rise once again. Each one of the 3,642 different fares on Costa Rica’s 732 bus routes will go up between ¢5 and ¢250, mostly depending on the length of trip.
For many long-term residents, these increases are no surprise. La Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (Aresep, or the Public Services Regulating Authority) periodically approves rate hikes to cover increased operational and administrative costs. The main reason for tomorrow’s rate increase is due to higher oil prices.
San José’s Periférica (peripheral route) will go up ¢10, many nearby San José suburbs (Sabana, San Pedro, Pavas, Desamparados, etc.) will increase ¢5-¢10, and the San José-Alajuela routes will climb ¢15. Long-haul buses will increase by larger amounts, like San José-Liberia’s ¢120 increase to ¢2,575 and the ¢100 change in the San José-Limón route.
In addition to rate changes, el Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes (MOPT, or the Ministry of Public Works and Transport) has unveiled major changes to the city’s public transportation. To begin, MOPT plans to have the 100 yellow school buses, which run between city sectors like the Periférica, increase to 1 every 10 minutes during hora pico (rush hour) and 1 every 20 minutes during regular hours. The inter-city buses should be able to complete their routes in 1 hour, provided that they can travel between 15 and 25 kilometers per hour.
In addition, Viviana Martín, Viceminister of Transportation, says that MOPT plans to improve city roads, such as the location of road “islands” and the eventual widening of streets on several well-traveled routes. During the second semester of 2008, MOPT also hopes to begin employing the use of electronic bus payments, which is the first phase of of a greater modernization plan.
One of MOPT’s main objectives is to actually reduce the number of public buses in San José. As any rush hour traveler can attest to, traffic in the city’s downtown has reached epic levels, and travel from one end to the other (Escazú-Curridabat, for example) can take well over 1.5 hours. To combat this problem, MOPT plans to add more inter-city/inter-suburb routes and in so doing, remove about 900 buses from the city’s streets.
Under these new plans, instead of having to travel from one suburb to San José, and then San José to the next suburb, you’ll be able to hop on a direct suburb-suburb route. For the 65% of Costa Rican residents that use public transportation, these new routes will save time and expense, with costs between ¢270 (Guadalupe-La Uruca) and ¢475 (Santa Ana-San Antonio-La Valencia).
There are 7 planned routes: Desmparados-Moravia (passing through Curridabat and San Pedro), Hatillo-Guadalupe (passing through San Pedro and Desamparados), La Uruca-Escazú (passing through Rohrmoser), Guadalupe-La Uruca, Moravia-La Valencia (passing through Tibás), Santa Ana-San Antonio-La Valencia (passing through Cariari and Heredia), and Hatillo-Alajuelita-Escazú (passing through San Sebastián).
Though prices are going up, MOPT plans to improve city bus service and reduce city traffic, which will be welcomed by both frequent users of San José’s buses, and the drivers who share the streets with them.
Maravedis interview with WiMAX Operator RCSA in Costa Rica
Radiografica Costarricense S.A (RACSA), a subsidiary of state-owned Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) in Costa Rica, owns a nationwide license in the 3.5GHz frequency band with 100MHz of spectrum. On August 2007, RACSA awarded a contract to Alvarion for the supply of 4MotionTM solution product range to provide extended wireless access services in several major cities in Costa Rica. As of April 2008 they have installed 14 WiMAX base stations in the Greater Metropolitan Areas of Costa Rica, covering the cities of San Jose, Alajuela, Cartago and Heredia, with an initial investment of US$3 million. Commercial service plans are available for 512Kbps (29 dlls) and 2Mbps (144 dlls). The service is offered under the name of Evoluciona. The network will be capable of carrying 20,000 broadband connections. The company expects to reach 75,000 WiMAX Subscribers by 2011. Click to read the interview…
Maravedis: What is your current WiMAX network status and development?
At this moment we are still in the implementation stage. We are currently installing 14 base stations; we expect to finalize setting up all the infrastructure in one month and a half. We initially bought 1,000 CPEs from Alvarion, because we thought the process of selling the service was going to be slow, however in the first week we sold all the CPEs. There was very good market acceptance of the technology, so we placed a new order and we are expecting to receive 4,000 additional CPEs in a couple of weeks. We have a customer waiting list of approximately 3,500 for the service.
We are quite happy since we haven’t invested in marketing campaigns or advertising. The service is selling itself, just from mouth to mouth communication. We started offering the service in urban areas, even where we have competing technologies such as ADSL and Cable. The service has been very well accepted.
After this stage is completed, we will decide on whether we will expand our network nationwide, addressing also the underserved and rural areas of Costa Rica, or if we will offer the service in the same coverage area that we have now, but with more base stations that support portability and mobility. We are looking at how the technology will evolve to support mobile services in the 3.5GHz band.
At this moment the focus is on fixed services to offer a good Quality of Service (QoS) and also have a larger number of cells. In the next step we will introduce portability; base stations will be installed every 3 – 4Km, and in the last stage (which is mobility) our base stations would be installed every 1 – 1.5km. Our spectrum in the 3.5GHz has a limitation in terms of the distance that can be reached, that’s why we will need a large number of base stations to guarantee the user speeds of 4Mbps, 6Mbps and 8Mbps in the future.
Maravedis: What growth do you anticipate by the end of the year 2008 in terms of the number of subscribers?
Our current network has a capacity to serve 20,000 users. We expect that by the end of the year we could reach some 8,000 subscribers, or probably more. The main limitation for us is the time required for installation. At RACSA, we have 10 installation teams, each team can install two or three CPEs per day; we will definitely need a larger staff and number of technicians to satisfy a bigger demand.
Maravedis: Talking about the CPEs, every operator is adopting a different strategy to deal with the high cost of the CPE. What is the current cost of the CPE and how much do you anticipate this cost could decrease? What strategy are you following to offer the CPE to your clients?
Currently the cost of the CPE is around US$500. We expected the cost of the CPE would decrease faster, but the decrease has been slow. We expect the cost of the CPE by the end of this year could reach the US$300 – US$350, but the hope of the CPE at US$100 is something that will not occur in the short term. The final user has the option of buying the CPE or paying a monthly fee for the use of the CPE. We are charging US$6 a month.
Maravedis: And in which cities or areas are you commercial with WiMAX?
In the Greater Metropolitan Areas of Costa Rica, which consists of 4 provinces: San Jose, Cártago, Alajuela and Heredia.
Maravedis: Could you please describe the service plans that RACSA is offering?
Yes, we are offering 3 services plans:
Evoluciona Basic: Speeds of 256kbps/512Kbps at US$29.
Evoluciona Plus: Speeds of 1Mbps/512Kbps at US$74
Evoluciona Premium: Speeds of 2Mbps/1Mbps at US$244
These prices do not include the rental of the equipment, which is around US$ 6-7 per month, plus installation fee of US$100.
Maravedis: Are you planning to partner with other equipment vendors when you offer mobility?
Yes, actually the contracts to equipment vendors are awarded by a beauty contest process. In our first stage we awarded the contract to Alvarion, and we recently extended this contract for additional US$1 million to buy new CPEs. Our law allows us to partially extend the contracts with our equipment vendors for up to $US1 million. If we want to sign bigger contracts we need to incur in another beauty contest. We are currently having talks with Alvarion, Aperto, Motorola and other equipment vendors for the next contract to offer mobility.
RACSA chose Alvarion solution with TDD (Time Division Duplexing) with the capacity to manage fixed and mobile systems. Through a software upgrade RACSA will be able to migrate the fixed subscribers to mobile. We expect to use this software upgrade during 2009; we are just waiting for the mobile equipment to be available.
Maravedis: I was reading the notes of an interview you previously had with Telesemana where you commented you expected to reach some 75,000 WiMAX subscribers in 4 years. What will be your strategy to reach this target and to accelerate the subscriber growth?
The strategy is to use a “Fideicomiso”. Under the Fideicomiso we will start an agreement with an International Bank. We will provide them with the network specifications and they will finance the project, they will buy the infrastructure and they will install the network. RACSA will just act as an administrator. The Bank will also select the equipment vendors.
Maravedis: Are you addressing the residential segment, the business segment or both?
Initially, our idea was to offer the service to the SME and SOHO; however we have experienced a great demand from the residential segment. We still offer the service to both business and residential users; however the split right now is around 95% residential.
Maravedis: Besides Internet access, which other applications are you offering or planning to offer in the future?
We are currently offering VPN services to SME. We are about to start some trials with voice and we will be eventually offering VoIP….
The complete version of the interview is available to WiMAXCounts™ subscribers only. The details include spectrum info, WiMAX subscriber numbers, subscriber split (residential & enterprise), ARPU, total base stations deployed along with breakdown by vendor and standard type, total CPEs deployed along with breakdown by vendor and standard type, competitive advantage, plus additional information.
