Global Voices Online

Just last week Carlos Slim, the wealthiest man alive, bought the biggest suscription TV provider in Nicaragua. That company, ESTESA, was already a de facto monopoly in its market, and now is part of the telecom empire Slim has built in Nicaragua.

At this moment, Slim owns ENITEL, with the brands CLARO (Mobile phone), Turbonett (Wireless internet access), AMNET (broadband and data transfer), ENITEL (the former state-controlled company that owns all conventional telephone lines in the country), and ESTESA.

However, the bigger they are the bigger they fall. For the last 10 days, there have been reports about problems accessing blogs hosted on Blogger.com while connecting via Turbonett. Some say it is a technical problem, like blogger Raúl Isaac Suárez of El Econoscopio [es], who believe that it is due to a problem with an international ISP from the connection in Guatemala. Others have been trying to connect from different places, or as Y ahora ¿de qué vamos a hablar? [es] has been doing by trying shortcuts via proxy.

In a virtual telecom monopoly, not having the option to choose from different providers can be a really big problem when the only competitor in the market fails to provide. Some users have been promoting more “direct” ways to tell Slim's companies what they want.

Ramon's blog explains that bigger companies also mean that actual problems might just get harder to resolve.

… Cuando esta empresa comienza a brindar el servicio de Internet, en uno que otro lugar del país, hacen un mercadeo masivo que depués no saben que hacer con la demanda por que no dan a vasto, no actualizan las “centralitas” a tiempo, por supuesto que las personas optan por el servicio DSL por ser menos costoso que el inalámbrico, cuando pasa esto las personas quedan con su contrato en la mano y en espera a que algún día llegue el servicio, ahh y otra de las excusas es que nunca tienen modems además que tenes que esperar como tres meses si es que todo esta bien si no …….

… When this company begins to provides its internet services in the country, they will create such a demand that they will not be able to cope. They already have problems with inventory at local offices. Of course people will try the DSL service since its cheaper, but they leave people remain with contrat in hand, waiting for their connection, and they never have enough modems, sometimes making you wait up to three months just for it.

UPDATE

Just today the “Blogspot Bug” was corrected. Y ahora de que vamos a hablar [ES] recounts the damagges.