Costa Rica
Power & telecom standards in Costa Rica
Connectivity Overview
Tempest Telecom offered dial-up internet access, WiFi hotspot access and broadband ethernet access in Costa Rica. We also offered Iridium satellite Internet and Voice access in Costa Rica for communications in rural areas without infrastructure.
Costa Rica uses 120V at 60Hz. Power outlets are type A, B and telephone jacks are RJ-11.
Dial-up Internet Access
Tempest Telecom provided local dial-up access numbers in Costa Rica at $0.155/minute. Travelers could connect using any standard modem with an RJ-11 telephone adapter.
WiFi Hotspot Access
Tempest Telecom provided WiFi hotspot access in Costa Rica at $19.95/day for unlimited browsing.
Adapters & Power
North American (Type A/B) plugs are compatible. An adapter may not be needed for US travelers.
Standard RJ-11 jacks are used. Most international modems will connect without an adapter.
Costa Rica at a Glance
- Capital
- San Jose
- Phone Code
- +506
- Voltage
- 120V / 60Hz
- Power Plug
- A, B
- Phone Jack
- RJ-11
- Currency
- Colon
- Dial-up
- $0.155/min
- WiFi
- $19.95/day
About connectivity in Costa Rica
Costa Rica uses 120V/60Hz with Type A and Type B outlets — the North American standard. The phone jack is RJ-11. The Costa Rican telecom sector was historically dominated by ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad), the state-owned utility that held a monopoly on fixed-line and mobile services through the 2000s. The 2008 CAFTA-DR free trade agreement opened the market to private competition, with Claro Costa Rica (América Móvil) and Movistar Costa Rica (Telefónica) launching in 2011 and 2010 respectively. Liberty Latin America operates the cable broadband subsidiary.
Costa Rican commercial Internet emerged in 1995 through RACSA (Radiográfica Costarricense, an ICE subsidiary) as the sole licensed ISP through much of the 1990s. Per-minute metered dial-up through ICE PSTN dominated the late 1990s. Costa Rica's broadband market opened more substantially after the 2008 telecom liberalization; the country has consistently ranked among the more digitally-developed Central American economies, with the technology sector (Intel had a major chip-assembly operation in San José from 1998-2014) driving infrastructure investment.
ICE introduced cardphone units in the 1990s with chip-card cardphones becoming standard. The Costa Rican prepaid international calling-card market through the 2000s and 2010s served the modest Costa Rican outbound diaspora — concentrated in the United States, particularly New Jersey (Hoboken and Newark have notable Tico communities) and the Miami-Dade area — plus the substantial inbound Nicaraguan migrant labor population calling family back home (Nicaraguans are the largest immigrant population in Costa Rica).
Tempest Telecom served Costa Rica through dial-up POPs in San José. Iridium satphones served the country's substantial ecotourism sector (Costa Rica is one of the world's premier biodiversity-tourism destinations), the Pacific and Caribbean coast maritime industries, expedition operators across the Cordillera de Talamanca and the broader Central American Caribbean rainforest customer base, and corporate logistics for the country's historic agricultural-export sector (coffee, bananas, pineapple).
Modern Costa Rica has expanding FTTH in the Central Valley (San José, Heredia, Alajuela) with mature 4G LTE coverage nationally. 5G rollout from Claro, Movistar, and Liberty began in 2023.
Tempest's services across Costa Rica, 1997–2012
Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in Costa Rica between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in Costa Rica drew from the same balance for pre-paid international voice calling, RADIUS-authenticated dial-up Internet roaming, metered Wi-Fi hotspot access, Iridium satellite voice, and Inmarsat BGAN data terminals. An attempted kiosk-payment federation (PATN, 1998) extended the same architecture to public Internet terminals but failed to reach scale.
Iridium satellite voice was available in Costa Rica from approximately 2001 (post-bankruptcy relaunch). Thuraya coverage did not extend to Costa Rica; Inmarsat BGAN data terminals filled the broadband gap from late 2005.
Nearby countries in Americas
Canada · Cayman Islands · Chile · Colombia · Cuba · Dominica · Dominican Republic · Ecuador