Dominican Republic

About connectivity in Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic uses 120V/60Hz with Type A and Type B outlets — the North American standard. The phone jack is RJ-11. Codetel (Compañía Dominicana de Teléfonos), founded in 1930 as a GTE subsidiary, dominated Dominican telecom for decades; the company was acquired by Verizon, then by América Móvil in 2006 and rebranded Claro Dominican Republic. Altice Dominicana (the post-2014 rebrand of the former Orange Dominicana) and Viva compete in mobile and broadband. The Dominican Republic was an unusually early adopter of mobile telephony in the Caribbean, with cellular networks expanding rapidly through the 1990s.

Dominican commercial dial-up Internet emerged in 1995-1996 through Codetel, Tricom, and several regional ISPs operating over the country's relatively dense PSTN infrastructure. Per-minute metered access dominated the late 1990s. Cable broadband from Tricom and ADSL from Codetel rolled out through the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the Caribbean's relatively short distances and concentrated urbanization allowing for fast broadband adoption compared to most Latin American peers. Mobile data dominates current Internet access.

Codetel introduced cardphone units in the 1990s with chip-card cardphones becoming standard. The Dominican prepaid international calling-card market through the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s was substantial in proportion to the country's population (~10 million), driven by the enormous Dominican-American diaspora — an estimated 2+ million people of Dominican origin live in the United States, concentrated in the New York Metropolitan Area (Washington Heights, the Bronx, northern New Jersey), Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, and South Florida. Dominican-American card brands targeting the Santo Domingo and Santiago calling corridors were a dominant ethnic-market category in US convenience-store and bodega networks through the 2000s and 2010s.

Tempest Telecom served the Dominican Republic through dial-up POPs in Santo Domingo and Santiago, with WiFi at $19.95/day at Punta Cana and Puerto Plata resorts as the country's Caribbean tourism market expanded through the 2000s. Iridium satphones served the maritime industry across the Caribbean shipping lanes and the broader Hispaniola humanitarian customer base (recurring hurricane-recovery operations).

Modern Dominican Republic has expanding FTTH in Santo Domingo and Santiago with mature 4G LTE coverage nationally. 5G rollout from Claro and Altice began in 2022.

Tempest's services across Dominican Republic, 1997–2012

Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in Dominican Republic between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in Dominican Republic 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 Dominican Republic from approximately 2001 (post-bankruptcy relaunch). Thuraya coverage did not extend to Dominican Republic; Inmarsat BGAN data terminals filled the broadband gap from late 2005.

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