Telecommunications of America, Tecomunica Nicaragua, is the new company that will offer internet and cable services nationwide, according to the information registered on its website. This new investment was announced after Daniel Ortega’s speech in which he stated that more taxes should be charged to telecommunications companies, in an open threat to commercial companies already established in the country.
The new company called Telecomunicaciones de América SA (Tecomunica SA) is a partnership between Grupo ICE of Costa Rica and Empresa Nacional de Transmisión Eléctrica (Enatrel), where its office is located. It arose in 2016, through its publication in La Gaceta on March 2, in which it reflects Ruthmary del Socorro Vanegas Solórzano, registered as a lawyer, as proxy.
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Tecomunica has been the telecommunications company protected by the Daniel Ortega regime since its creation and in charge of distributing Wi-Fi in most of the country’s parks, in addition to providing the corresponding maintenance. It is until this moment that the company enabled services for the home and activated its website.
Amaru Ruiz, from Fundación del Río, assures that the creation and launch of this entity is “suspicious, especially as a result of Ortega’s statements and the discretionary management that the regime makes of state companies, it seems that the purpose is to continue obtaining profits in all sectors.
“This company could dump, obtain contract preferences for being a state company and receive preference for Wi-Fi installation projects. Teko today carried out activations in the streets of Managua”, highlights Ruiz.
For its part, the Costa Rican entity has financial problems that have worsened since 2020 together with its partner in the neighboring country to the south, Cable Visión. Both companies had legal problems and accumulated losses between 2014 and 2017 for 9 million dollars (48% of their assets).
The Nicaraguan president recently warned companies that “here they have multimillion-dollar incomes, it is true that they have to pay a tax, but the relationship we have is not fair, and there we will have to see how they talk so that they can contribute more. They earn so much more, so much more must they contribute through taxes to be able to build more schools, more health posts, more highways, more roads. Yes, they must contribute more!”
He indicated that the business that these companies manage in times of cell phones and the Internet is enormous and that therefore “they never stop winning.” “Even when the pandemic hit, they earned much more, because since people couldn’t go out they had to live by just communicating,” added Ortega.
