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This day has been sponsored by : GSC / Diana Floricel's bday on 1st Dec

Week 3 Day 5 - "ICE"

Those of you I used to work with, probably immediately thought about logging an incident. Those of you in Germany about a fast train. And the rest of you about the cold. But here in Costa Rica ICE stands for Istituto Costaricense de Electricidad.

This is a public company which is currently, the country's only provider of electricity, cell phones, and internet. This means that these services are currently still affordable and any profits go to schools, homes for the elderly, etc. Some say that phone calls are the cheapest in the world. A text message is about 3 US cents.

These "happy times" are about to change. The Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLC) forces the ICE to make their facilities (like antenas, cables, etc.) available to their competition. This is one big concern of the opponents of the TLC... that now prices for electicity, phone, and internet will go through the roof an will no longer be affordable for a large portion of the population. In the newspaper, a few days ago, it was front page news that by March the electricity prices will go up by 28%.

On the other hand, the lady who is teaching Spanish has been waiting for months now that a new internet provider is finally ready to provide services, as supposedly they are offered at a lower cost than ICE. Hmmmm.

Also, right now I could not buy a new cell phone number if I wanted to... they are out of numbers!

And the cable confusion you see in picture two you can see here all the time and everywhere.

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For today's sponsors

Well, well, well... dear ex-colleagues, have I not chosen an appropriate topic, especially for you?!?

Also... La mulți ani, Diana K.-F.! On your birthday we will open the first door of the advent calendar at the Hogarcito.