Telecommunications giant Huawei is to offer equipment and solutions to help the ICE Group deploy private 5G networks for companies in Costa Rica.
Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (Grupo ICE) is the Costa Rican government-run electricity and telecommunications services provider. Huawei will offer provisioning and implement fifth-generation private networks, for ICE. The deal includes operation and maintenance.
Local press reports indicate that Grupo ICE had also announced in recent days the selection of Nokia as a supplier for 5G.
In evidence of a trend that is gaining traction in both developed and developing markets ICE says its plan, through its Costa Rican subsidiary Racsa, is to build private networks for its business customers in both the public and private sectors, taking advantage of the advantages of capacity, speed and performance of 5G technology.
The parastatal opened a call to find suppliers for 5G deployment at the end of March. Its goal is to launch 5G private networks commercially this year.
For the construction of business networks, Racsa will use spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. Racsa will also carry out the commercialization of the services.
DPL News adds that operators are awaiting an announcement about the planned 5G auction that will give them access to the spectrum necessary to launch new services.
In May we reported that Costa Rica’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Telecommunications (Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia y Telecomunicaciones, MICITT) had issued a formal order to regulator Sutel (Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones) to begin the process of auctioning 5G spectrum in the market.
