by Rod Hughes

If you despaired of getting your new phone installed this century, take heart. The Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) has cut the waiting list almost by half from a high of 134,500 lines in the past four years. The downside: 73,000 are still waiting. Some of those may have even died in the meantime.

Naturally, the Greater Metropolitan Area got the most attention where waiting lists were slashed 56%, followed by Guanacaste province, the Central Pacific area and Limón by 40%. The poor relation were the Northern zone (28%) and the unfortunates who live in the Southern zone (11%). The latter may have to resort to smoke signals.

The problem is not the switching equipment. In 2002, ICE shelled out for the complex switchboards for 445,000. The rub comes with the physical stringing of lines from switching equipment to the user’s home. In 2003, ICE connected 38,000 users and the following year it was a miserable 14,000. And 2005, they only managed a puny 5,500.

Last year, they were so busy demonstrating against CAFTA they managed only 3,000. Of course, assistant manager of telecommunications Claudio Bermúdez breezily told the morning paper La Nación, the government monopoly had to keep up with people moving and transferring their lines.

Take a look at these figures. There are 1,045,000 active lines but switching equipment for 400,000 more lines. And 73,000 waiting customers and counting. The highest number of pending customers is Escazú, Heredia, San Isidro de El General, San Antonio de Bélen, Grecia and Alajuela. But wait. Any day now…