Epsy Campbell decides
to make presidential run


Former party president Epsy Campbell said Monday she would seek her organization's nomination to run for president.

As a pre-candidate in the Partido Acción Ciudadana, she will face party founder Ottón Solís for the nomination. Selection will be made by party members.

Solís was a close second in the 2006 election with Óscar Arias Sánchez. He was third in 2002. However, Solís did not oppose the free trade treaty with the United States strongly, and his party did not put up the rearguard action that treaty opponents wanted.

Ms. Campbell, 45, for her part also has a political problem. She was one of those many individuals who accepted a secret contract with Arias paid for by an international development bank. That took place while crucial elements of the free trade treaty legislation still were in the Asamblea Legislativa. Her contract was for $9,000, but she canceled it quickly and said in public that she made a mistake to accept it.

Acción Ciudadana, therefore, appears to have lost the strong support of the Free trade opponents, and a new conglomeration of political activists appear to be forming a new party to the left of Acción Ciudadana.


Shell game with Internet
continues with Acelera

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Please forgive me for being naive despite having lived five years in Costa Rica. Several weeks ago it was announced that the local telecom monopoly, ICE would double bandwidth on its Acelera or ADSL Internet Service. This according to a directive by Casa Presidencial, along with some noise about ICE being forced to lower rates just when they had been caught in an attempt to unilaterally approve their own price hike. Supposedly the upgrade would provide cheaper Internet because a subscriber could opt to keep their current level of service at the lower price.

Well Alice, here on the other side of the looking glass things become strange. After two weeks of waiting, the Acelera Internet increase is here, and please forgive me for not noticing because it did not actually apply to me. How could I have been so naive to think that I might actually get a better deal from the local telephone monopoly?

What they failed to mention is that this Internet speed boost would not apply to people who already subscribed to the highest tier of home service. Anyone with the service plan called Home Premium Plus will find they have been “upgraded” to a business service plan which provides the same level of bandwidth for the same price as before. Obviously anyone who can pay $71/month for Internet service does not need a price break.

New subscribers to the Acelera service plan called Home Premium Plus can receive 2048/512 kbps of bandwidth at a price of $37/month. So, you may ask why should I keep my business service plan, which provides 2048/768 kps of bandwidth at $71/month? The answer is that second number, which is actually the upstream bandwidth. This bandwidth is usually of more concern for phone calls on VoIP. I enjoy crystal clear phone calls to the United States while being able to surf the Internet simultaneously precisely because I have the 768 kps of upstream bandwidth.

I have also learned in my time here beyond the looking glass that there is usually some kind of trick to circumvent obstacles engineered by slow-witted people. I will replace my current system with two ADSL connections. I will attach the VoIP device to its own line with 1024/512 kbps of bandwidth ($24/month). My computer will be attached to a line with 2048/512 kps of service ($37/month). So I will pay $62/month instead of $71, and will end up with more aggregate service than before. I know that 512 kbps of upstream service will be sufficient because I will no longer share bandwidth between the phone and my web surfing.

I also realize that I should count myself fortunate to have ADSL service, because the 2048/512 kbps level of service costs only $37/month compared to $70/month for the same thing on cable modem. Now would be a good time to apply for ADSL and disconnect your RACSA cable modem. It is actually worth navigating the ICE bureaucracy, because doing so will save $396 a year on high-speed Internet.

Of course anyone looking to the future will note there are serious problems with the Internet growth strategy in Costa Rica. Most people in the United States have long moved away from ADSL service and have an average Internet speed of 3 mbps downstream on cable modem. On a recent trip to visit my family in Washington D.C., I noticed that the neighborhood now receives 20,000 kbps (20 mbps) of downstream service for $75/month. This is because the local telephone company, Verizon, had actually replaced the old copper telephone wires with coaxial and fiber-optic cables.

At some point we need to ask ourselves if Costa Rica actually has “high-speed” Internet while the rest of the world receives 20 times the amount of bandwidth. It reminds me of a time when we used dial-up Internet in Costa Rica while the rest of the world was had discovered ADSL.

Decision on grocery bags
supported with reservations

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Those of us expats who moved here in expectation of enlightened environmental policies, only to be shocked to find that the reality was different than we expected, are pleased to read that a U.S, based country is spearheading the movement away from poison plastic here.

PriceSmart is to be commended, and hopefully "Tico" companies will catch the wave soon.

Of course one mustn't make the mistake of faulting the host country. For after all, It's the "big boys" — USA, Europe, Asia, etc. —  that manufacture the stuff for the rest of the world to disseminate.

The article fell just a tad short though, in generically describing the alternative bags it would be offering as "cloth".????? Can they be more specific? Cloth can be made from plastic, for goodness sake!

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but since they are climbing the mantle of environmentalist hero, if they plan on selling cotton bags, as the answer to the plastic ones, WE say JUST SAY NO.!!! Cotton is nearly as environmentally anti-green as plastic. Burlap bags would be much better Mr. Laporte.