Costa Rica Communications - 2024

Telephones - fixed lines

total subscriptions: 491,613 (2022 est.)

subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 11 (2021 est.)

Telephones - mobile cellular

total subscriptions: 7,834,435 (2021 est.)

subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 152 (2021 est.)

Telecommunication systems

general assessment: the fixed broadband market is one of the few parts of Costa Rica’s telecom sector to experience solid growth in recent years, both in size and revenue; the country’s fiber network expanded by 56% in 2020, reaching about 176,200km; fixed-line broadband traffic volume also increased by more than 30%, year-on-year;  other areas of the market have proven relatively lack luster, with slow or even negative growth; some of this can be attributed to the economic and social impacts of the pandemic, but the fixed-line and mobile sectors have both been struggling to produce decent results since well before the start of the crisis; the rollout of 5G network infrastructure in Costa Rica is unlikely to occur to any scale before 2023, but this may be one of the few remaining areas of opportunity open to investors outside of fixed-line internet and pay TV services (2021)

domestic: roughly 11 per 100 fixed-line and 152 per 100 mobile-cellular (2021)

international: country code - 506; landing points for the ARCOS-1, MAYA-1, and the PAC submarine cables that provide links to South and Central America, parts of the Caribbean, and the US; connected to Central American Microwave System; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) (2019)

Broadcast media

over two dozen privately owned TV stations and 1 publicly owned TV station nationwide; cable network services are widely available; more than 100 privately owned radio stations and a public radio network (2022)

Internet country code

.cr

Internet users

total: 4.316 million (2021 est.)

percent of population: 83% (2021 est.)

Broadband - fixed subscriptions

total: 992,725 (2020 est.)

subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 20 (2020 est.)