Gathering new ideas

PANAMA. Costa Rica resisted the winds of change of telecommunications for more than a decade and had now come to accept the technical and administrative evolution needed to improve telecommunication in their country. A look over the border proved fruitful.

A technical delegation from Costa Rica came to Panama for a three day meeting with representatives of the National Authority of Public Services (ASEP).

George Miles, member of the Superintendency Council of Telecommunications from Costa Rica (SUTEL) said it was very positive to learn about the Panamanian experience.

Important aspects of telecommunication were discussed at the meeting such as megahertz value, minimum price for the public tender, prices for mobile telephony, regulations and antennas.

Present at the meeting were members of SUTEL and the Costarican Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications, from Panama, there was ASEP, engineers from the National Telecommunication agency and their legal department.

Costa Rica will soon be opening a public tender for three new bandwidths. Their cellphone market now at 40 percent (about 2 million cellphone) while in Panama the penetration is 115 percent.

Currently, Costa Rica offers only post payment phone service through a state company, but will open the market to accept three private companies to compete with the state at the end of 2010.

Companies established in Panama, Cable & Wireless, Claro, Digicel and Telefonica are now interested in theCosta Rican market.

They are using TDMA technology while Panamanians are using a third generation (3.5G) network which allows multiple multimedia services. Recently, Panama went through a successful tender where Claro and Digicel came into market in a model process.

Panamanian telecommunications management of the electromagnetic spectrum is an example of control, order and transparency.