Q COSTA RICA / Costa Rica may soon have a fourth Mobile Services Provider, as Tigo (Millicom) is preparing to enter the Costa Rican mobile market by bidding for the 70 MHz spectrum in the country’s forthcoming tender, reports El Financiero.
Tigo, which already provides pay television and Internet services, after the acquisition of Amnet in 2008, under the Tigo Star brand in Costa Rica, expressed an interest in the tender by providing comments on the tender process announced by the country’s regulator, the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones (Sutel).
Tigo asked for an extension on the bid deadline and requested clarification on the price-setting mechanism, with Claro (Mexico’s America Movil) and Movistar (Spain’s Telefonica), also providing feedback, said the report.
The tender is conducted under the public bidding modality to grant seven blocks in the 1,800 MHz and 1,900 / 2100 MHz bands for telephony and mobile Internet services.
These frequencies were pending to be granted since 2010.
At that time only Claro and Movistar presented offers and obtained the respective concessions, emtering into competition with the State agency, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), up to that time the sole provider of mobile cellular services in the country. With the break of the monopoly, ICE crreated the Kölbi brand to compete with the foreign operators.
Millicom is a Luxembourg-based operator with operations in Africa, Europe and Latin America (Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua).
Interested bidders required to submit their proposals by 13 February 2017.
Source Elfinancierocr.com
