New pay phones will take money and a variety of cards
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The telephone company says it has begun the job of transforming the nation’s 8,000 pay phones into uniform devices that accept money, phone card with an embedded chip and two other types of phone cards. The initial work has begun in Tres Rios, said the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad.
Phone users have been frequently frustrated by telephones that would not accept phone cards with chips or those that would not accept coins.
The company announcement said that 2,000 of the new phones would be set up to send text messages, a service that is now only available from cell phones.
The work will mean that some phones will be out of service, the state monopoly said. The company said that vancalism was taking it toll, too.