Costa Rica News – 4G mobile phone service will soon be available for Costa Ricans, before Christmas, in fact, according to the state-run Electricity Institute (ICE). As soon as early 2014, the private carriers will most likely begin offering it, as well.
ICE will launch phone plans specifically for its 4G network in mid-December.
All companies must wait for a regulation that will take effect on November 30th that lets clients keep their phone numbers if they switch carriers. 4G is supposedly 10 times faster than 3G, better for downloads, games, surfing the web, and watching videos. A test plan was launched with select clients in July.
ICE Marketing Director Danny Salas explained that they already invested $10 million on the technology to be implemented and that they will continue to invest more, in order to “guarantee customer satisfaction.”
We have not yet been told the price this service will cost us, as users. Companies will have to be competitive with their prices, or people will easily switch to other carriers.
Claro and Movistar are the two biggest private cell phone companies in the country.
They both plan to offer 4G, but have not declared start dates yet. Claro plans to “base (their) strategy in offering a bigger bandwidth than all other operators.”
