NevOn

New forum on Costa Rica debuts

If you're interested in Costa Rica - a real paradise in my experience - you might be interested in participating in Foro Tico, a new discussion forum that opened last week.

This is the place where Costa Ricans hang out to talk about things that interest them. Things in the news, politics, sport, what's on the cinema, you name it - the types of things that any group of people with common interests want to chat about. As it's just started, its still building momentum. Little acorns and all that.

So if Costa Rica and its people are things that interest you, drop in for a chat. Oh, it's a Spanish-language forum so English won't cut it.

It's a great forum! Now I'd better disclose my total bias - it was started by my wife who's Costa Rican. She's also a blogger, blogging (in Spanish) at Out of Costa Rica since last November. Why not drop in there and say hello (or 'hola').

Use VoIP and go to jail

Last week, I posted commentary on problems using SkypeOut, the paid-for service offered by the Skype internet phone service.

I used the example of my wife's unsuccessful efforts to call numbers in Costa Rica, where we have family and friends. Since that post, something happened.

All of a sudden, calls to the numbers concerned have been getting through. And not only getting through, but the calls have superb clarity and quality, something we've not experienced before when calling any numbers in Costa Rica via SkypeOut. Skype, did you do something? I have an idea that you did. Or is it that the phone service in Costa Rica suddenly got better?

That's definitely a rhetorical question, as there's something going on in Costa Rica concerning internet telephony, or VoIP, that indicates how much of a threat to traditional phone systems VoIP services like Skype do represent in the eyes of many phone companies.

On Saturday, an article in La Nación (in Spanish, and registration required), the leading and most influential Costa Rican daily newspaper, reports on some pretty radical measures that Costa Rica's state-owned telephone company is planning to get pushed through the Costa Rican legislature to prevent usage of internet phone services by making use of them illegal.

According to La Nación, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), the phone company, is deliberating two things - either, to consider internet telephony as a fraudulent activity and to make it a criminal offence for anyone to use VoIP services; or, treat it as an added-value service and regulate it.

What? Let's just run that again.

What's going on in Costa Rica?

A wholly off-topic rant about Costa Rica, a country close to my heart - I lived there through much of the 80s and I have family and friends there.

If you don't know Costa Rica (even where it is), read a guide like Fodors' Costa Rica. Quick description: small country (size of Wales/West Virgina), in Central America between Panama and Nicaragua. Totally unlike any other Latin American country: no revolutions, no military, high standards of living, fantastic tourist destination (go there for your next holiday!), etc. The coffee from Costa Rica is arguably the best in the world.

Yes, they also have bananas, but this is no banana republic. Well, that's what I've always believed until very recently.

A financial scandal of epic proportions is exploding in this small country that, if it were happening in a European country, would see the government's speedy fall and lots of people in jail.

We're not talking about some government official taking a bribe: we're talking about lots of government officials in collusion with some business leaders systematically pillaging the state social security and health care system, involving a $40 million loan from the government of Finland earmarked for updating medical equipment in Costa Rican hospitals.

It looks like the people involved have fiddled some of the cash as nobody knows where much of the equipment is or even if some hospitals will even get it. Judging by the lively discussions on lots of discussion forums in Costa Rica, my analysis is putting it mildy and politely.

Then last night, the wife of the ex-director of the state electricity company left the country, allegedly with one billion colones (local currency, about $2.4 million) that she allegedly received from French company Alcatel. Clearly a bit more than absolutely necessary for a shopping trip to Miami. For a country the size and GDP of Costa Rica, that's an incredible amount of money.

What's amazing is that this scandal appears to embrace so many levels in government as well as deeply into the private sector, and could extend to other countries. Things like this just don't happen in Costa Rica, which is what makes it all so incredibly shocking and sad.

Read more at Americas.org | Government Corruption Scandal Explodes. If you're a Spanish-speaker, read the latest news in Costa Rica's main newspaper, La Nación (registration required) or check out the discussion in the Teletica Canal 7 forum.