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May 09Long delayed telecommunications wave once again at risk
The reach of the power of the executive branch of our government falls painfully short as the conglomerate of institutions invested with the care taking of project development fight each other for the paying of responsibility dues in the over-stretched course of preparations for the Free Trade Treaty charter.
The office created specially for the overseeing and regularization of all aspects of the soon to explode offer of private-funded telecommunication companies is even unable to pay the salaries of it´s employees. The SUTEL –initials in spanish for the Regulating Superintendency of Telecommunications- has contested the refusal expressed by the ICE to release about 450 million colones meant for the financing of operations of the recently created and fundamental institution.
ICE’s authorities claim they will not approve the outing of the aforementioned figure as –according to them- the new law that allowed for the existence of SUTEL also failed to properly assign a recipient for the funds intended to finance the regulations of such services. In short, technicalities which stiffen the already paralyzed process much needed to permit Costa Rica to adequate to the fearsome competition challenges.
The long-standing reluctance shown by the ICE to accept the irrevocable fact of private competition to their once holy monopoly market of local telecommunications once contested fiercely the mere likeness of a trade agreement´s existence with the US moving its massive bulk of Union leadership and labour force to the streets of San Jose with failing final electoral results. Notwithstanding, the lingering agenda of obstacles to the full execution of the treaty´s measures makes their resolve not just obvious but some might even quarrel if obnoxious.