Costa Rica's ICE buys Cable Vision

Juan Fernandez Gonzalez | 08-12-2013

Costa Rica's Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) has bought pay-TV platform Cable Vision. The company will become a subsidiary of the public telecom and energy group.

“The operation reflects ICE's aim to actively participate in the cable TV market as a provider, increasing our customers' offering”, the company said in a statement.

This is ICE's second recent move in the pay-TV market. The company also launched an IPTV platform - Kölbi - in June, through which it offers up to 87 channels, available both in SD and HD.

ICE had been negotiating the deal for a few months but, according to the national newspaper La Nación, Sutel - the country's telecom authority - wanted ICE to give 350Mhz of spectrum back, in order to keep a more fair share of the audiovisual space. But Sutel decided to take a step back on 5 November, leaving the road free for the deal.

Cable Vision currently offers up to 100 channels on an interactive platform, plus three different Internet packages with speeds up to 4Mb.