Cell Phones

Cell phones are very popular in Costa Rica and many locals use them in place of a land line phone. Cellular service is a government owned enterprise too. TDMA and GSM technology serve the cellular industry here in Costa Rica.  There are no new TDMA lines currently available, but  GSM lines are released several times a year.  All cellular contracts are currently limited to residents but in the near future pre-paid cellular services for GSM will be available to anyone, resident or not. 

With the basic cellular plan, you receive 60 free minutes of outgoing local calls (all incoming calls are free and all calls within Costa Rica are considered local) along with free voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding and conference calling for the basic tariff of ¢2.900 ($5.85). Caller ID is an additional ¢250 ($.50) per month.

Calls are charged additionally per minute after 60 minutes depending on the time of day.  From 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, additional minutes cost ¢30 ($.06). The rest of the time, including weekends from Friday at 7 p.m. until Monday at 7 a.m. is ¢23 ($.046) per minute. 

Text messaging is popular here and is billed additionally at a rate of ¢1.50 ($.003) for each message sent. A maximum of 160 characters are permitted per message and messages received are free.  Taxes are charged as a percentage of your bill, so if you have a lot of calling charges, you pay more in taxes. 

Local cellular service is relatively inexpensive, but long distance charges can really add up. If you plan on using your phone to call the U.S., it costs .27 per minute, not including tax. The owner of the cellular line must authorize international access.  You can also use an international calling card.  Colibri and Viajera are the two available calling cards.  It costs about thirty two cents per minute with each of these cards.

Use of a Costa Rican cell phone from another country (roaming service) is available. This service can be requested by visiting the ICE office in San Pedro in the Torre Zeta office building (4th floor). 

For more information, please see:

Cell phones and how to get one in Costa Rica

Communications: Phones & Internet