MAP > Internet Providers in Costa Rica

Costa Rica’s liberalized telecom industry has enjoyed substantial development in all the sectors in recent years. Despite, state-owned operator, the ICE remains dominant provider of the fixed line services, regional operators by the name Claro and the Movistar, have been the significant players in the essential mobile services market. Some fixed lines have fallen for several years though the most recently, decline, and has been the offset by the growing consumer use of the VoIP services. This was mainly stimulated by the year 2014 hike in the tariffs for the fixed line calls.

Costa Rica’s broadband market has been the most developed in the whole of Central America, with the highest broadband penetration for this locale. The geographical distribution is unequal, with the much high digital gap than in the case of the telephone services. When compared with the whole of Latin America, this country’s broadband penetration lags behind Argentina, Chile, Uruguay as well as some of the Caribbean Islands. There has been a very steady growth in the overall telecom sector revenue for few years peaking at 24%, though since then, this has gone on to fall, being more moderate 4.2% in the year 2016 as well as 3% in the year 2017.

The fixed-line voice service usually accounts for close to 5% of the total revenue while the revenue from the VoIP services, though, the increase has been sharp in the recent years, and it still accounts for only 1%. Costa Rican telecom sector has displayed great resilience than most of the other countries in this region. With the implementation of various portability, there is a great scope for the increased competition in the coming years. Some of the companies which have been mentioned in this report do include Cable Tica, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, Tigo, and RASCA.

Some of the key developments in this report include
• ICE securing access to the Telia Carrier’s backbone network of Central America.
• The report includes regulator’s market data report for the year 2017, the telco’s financial and the operating data updates, the recent market developments.
• Movistar and Claro to secure a license at the auction.
• The Liberty Latin America got to acquire 80% stake in the Cabletica.
• Regulator adopts the LRIC model to be able to calculate access and the interconnection rates.
• ICE is going on to invest a large chunk in the multi-technology NGN projects.