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Orlando Cascante, director of Mobile Services at ICE, confirmed yesterday that the Ericsson GSM lines were sold out as of last Wednesday.  The 600.000 Ericsson lines were sold in 11 months, about 2,000 lines per day.  TDMA lines are still available.

Cascante stated that some lines will be recovered in the short term due to non payment of the bills, on the average ICE disconnects 5,000 overdue users per month.

Alfredo Sasso, President of ASOFAC (Association of Representatives of Cellular Manufacturers) expressed displeasure at the lack of lines. “ICE offered prepaid lines, portability (changing from TDMA to GSM and keeping your number ) and they did not do it, now some of our members are overstocked on telephones. ”

ICE plans to increase by 50% the Ericsson and Alcatel cellular networks, an extra 500,000 lines, but no information was available as to the status of that project.  In Costa Rica there are 1.5 million cellular lines, 600,000 Ericsson GSM, 400,000 Alcatel GSM and 544,000 TDMA.