Costa Rica invests US$40 Million in telecom's

The Costa Rican government has announced that the government owned telecommunications monopoly ICE will invest US$40.3 Million in two seperate contracts to improve telecommunications in the country.
Lucent gets $28.8 Million to improve cellular coverage in rural areas. They will also help with subscriber management and billing. To be honest I'm not completely clear on the details as it is quite confusing and my Spanish isn't good enough. It looks like Lucent will be increasing the current TDMA system capacity with 503,000 lines using Ericsson kit. This will add 53,000 new subscribers. In addition Alcatel is supplying new 1800 band GSM equipment with a capacity of 400,000 lines. They expect to have 50,000 subscribers to begin with.
The TDMA capacity will be increased over the next 5 months and the GSM system should be live in December.
Ericsson gets $11.5 Million to improve the switches adding ISDN and other improvements to their services.
It's absolutely commendable that they finally improve the networks. My question is can the Costa Rican govt really afford spending this kind of money at this time or is it that they can't afford not to, as ICE is the only real money spinner they have.
Everyone knows that they will have to privatize it at some point, is it really a good idea to throw more money at it?
On the other hand, most regional telephone companies have been privatized on the promise of massive infrastructure investments by the companies. They have then been promised private monopolies to make their money back. This has meant ridiculous telecommunication prices in the Caribbean and Panama for example.
If Costa Rica's goverment were forward looking, they would privatize and demonopolize at the same time. Costa Rica's high tech industry would really benefit and San Jose, CR could potentially become even closer to it's California name sake in sake of economics and innovation. Then this investment would mean a level playing field once they actually open up and it would really take off.
Read More (In Spanish):
[Nacion] [La Prensa]