Costa Rica's Cellular Market Now Officially Competitive
Movistar opened its doors on Tuesday, Claro is doing business on the hush hush until Friday

The start of operations of Movistar and Claro this week ends the  monopoly in cellular  telecommunications held by the state telecom, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE).

Although Spain's Movistar opened its doors to the public on Tuesday, signing up customers for prepaid and postpaid cellular service, Mexico's Claro is doing business on the hush hush and behind closed doors, at least until Friday when it opens its doors officially.

At Multiplaza the storefront windows to Claro are still boarded up with a hostess at the door allowing in only a select number of people. Inside, potential customers are greeted by a large selection of cellular telephones and plans and pricing, customers still have to take a number in an virtually empty store to be served.

At Movistar a photo captures the irony of the situation, no matter what one still need ICE. The photo posted on Facebook shows a Movistar display with a ICE sign of pending service connection. To be fair, the service request is for fixed line telecommunications, which still ICE is the only service provider.

The question is why would a cellular telecom like Movistar need a fixed line? Don't they have 1 million lines available and quite sure some locked up in the back room for their own use? And if for a credit card processing machine, there are now wireless units that use a cellular chip. Didn't anyone tell Movistar

"Who's your daddy", Movistar?

For the most part, the major complaint of the new customers of the new operators is coverage and connection.

For instance, Inside Costa Rica purchased a data SIM chip from Claro, but will not send or receive text messages to and from numbers of other operators. Works great within the Claro network, so does the data connection of 1.5 mbps we tried.

Claro, like Movistar are offering voice and date packages to suit all types of needs, both in prepaid and postpaid (subscription) services.

The prepaid services can be recharged with as little as ¢100 colones and each operator offers bonus recharges for customers, depending on the amount of the recharge.

Postpaid services include plans with cellular phones are reduced prices and even free, for units like Blackberry, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia, to name a few.

Although anyone can obtain prepaid service, only nationals and legal residents (residency cedula required) can subscribe to the postpaid and obtain plan packages with telephones.

It is expected that in the coming weeks both Movistar and Claro will sort out their start of operations problems and give ICE some serious competition.

Jorge Abadía, the Telefonica (parent company of Movistar) spokesman, stated that "Movistar is proud to be the first private operator to begin operations in Costa Rica. We are proud of our phone selection, and are in negotiations with Apple to offer their phones, we should have news within the next few weeks. We have a technologically advanced network, which is completely backwards compatible, so 2G (GSM) and 3G users may use our network, which offers data speeds of up to 1 megabyte per second. We will differentiate ourselves through customer service and technical support."

Another market Movistar is seeking to please is the small and medium business market. Movistar will give special rates on regular calls and long distance calls.

In addition they offer a cost control system, which means that companies may give their employees a phone with a preset limit. If the employee goes over the limit, the phone converts to post-pay mode and the employee may reload it at one of the service points throughout the country.

Commentary: With the opening of the telecom sector, foreigners who are not "legal" residents (ie. tourists, visitors, etc) in Costa Rica can now obtain cellular service and purchase technology (a cellular phone, smartphone, tab, etc) from operators, including ICE, without the residency requirements. BUT this applies only to PREPAID and CASH purchases. For postpaid (subscription) and finances packages, ie equipment and a minutes plan, residency is still required. Don't believe anything to the contrary.