Can you hear me now?

We are using a cell phone that our landlady is providing until our landline is installed. There has been an order for the line for more than two months (the order sign posted in my street-facing window tells me so), and we have no choice but to wait for the line. ICE (“eee-say”) is the country’s telecommunications monopoly, and we’re at their mercy. ICE has a monopoly on power and cell phones, too.

You’d think that with a monopoly we’d pay a hefty price for phone service, but really it’s only about $9 a month for our cell phone—because ICE is government owned, it has a restricted pricing structure.

When we first came to Costa Rica there were waiting lists for new cell phone numbers. Now ICE says it has plenty of numbers available, and so we’re about ready to get a cell phone of our own.

While it’s frustrating not having a landline after so many weeks, and just one cell phone for our entire family at the moment, it’s great paying so little for our phone service each month.

And that’s no phoney baloney!