Telecommunications in Costa Rica include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.

Radio and television

Radio stations Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio sta ...

: more than 100 privately owned radio stations and a public radio network (2007)."Communications: Costa Rica"
''World Factbook'', U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, 7 January 2014. Retrieved 13 January 2014. *

Radios Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

: 980,000 (1997). *

Television stations A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ear ...

: multiple privately owned TV stations and 1 publicly owned TV station; cable network services are widely available (2007). *

Television set A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...

s: 525,000 (1997).

Telephones

Communications service provider A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunica ...

: Grupo ICE, government monopoly. * Calling code: +506 *

International call prefix An international call prefix, international dial-out code or international direct dial code (IDD code) is a trunk prefix that indicates an international phone call. In the dialling sequence, the prefix precedes the country calling code (and, fur ...

: 00 * Main lines: 1.0 million lines in use, 75th in the world (2012). * Mobile cellular: 6.2 million lines, 100th in the world (2012). * Telephone system: good domestic telephone service in terms of breadth of coverage; under the terms of CAFTA-DR, the state-run telecommunications monopoly was scheduled to be opened to competition from domestic and international firms, but has been slow to open to competition, point-to-point and point-to-multi-point microwave, fiber-optic, and coaxial cable link rural areas; connected to Central American Microwave System, a trunk microwave radio relay system that links the countries of

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

and

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

with each other. (2011). * Satellite earth stations: 2 Intelsat (

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

) (2011). * Communications cables: landing points for the Americas Region Caribbean Ring System (ARCOS-1),

MAYA-1 Maya-1 was a Filipino nanosatellite. It was developed under the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite program (PHL-Microsat) and was jointly implemented by the University of the Philippines and the Department of Science and ...

, and the Pan-American Crossing submarine cables that provide links to South and

, parts of the Caribbean, and the US (2011).

Internet

Top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

.cr .cr is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Costa Rica. Second-level domains * .ac.cr - Academic: Universities * .co.cr - Commercial * .ed.cr - Education: Colleges, High Schools, etc. * .fi.cr - Financial institutions such as banks, etc ...

, the Academia Nacional de Ciencias is the registrar. *

Internet users The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

: 194,269 users, 154th in the world; 34.7% of the population, 123rd in the world (2012).Calculated using penetration rate and population data fro
"Countries and Areas Ranked by Population: 2012"
, Population data, International Programs, U.S. Census Bureau, retrieved 26 June 2013"Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000-2012"
International Telecommunication Union (Geneva), June 2013, retrieved 22 June 2013 * Fixed broadband: 32,192 subscriptions, 120th in the world; 5.7% of population, 98th in the world (2012)."Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012"
Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE,

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

. Retrieved on 29 June 2013. *

Wireless broadband Wireless broadband is telecommunications technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access or computer networking access over a wide area. The term comprises both fixed and mobile broadband. The term broadband Originally the word ...

: Unknown (2012)."Active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012"
Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE,

. Retrieved on 29 June 2013. * Internet hosts: 147,258 hosts, 78th in the world (2012). * IPv4: 44,032 addresses allocated, less than 0.05% of the world total, 78.6 addresses per 1000 people (2012).Population

The World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is availabl ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

. Accessed on 2 April 2012. Note: Data are mostly for 1 July 2012. *

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

s: 2 ISPs (1999): ** Consumer ADSL services are only offered by Grupo ICE. ** Cable Modem services are offered by two companies countrywide, Cable Tica and Amnet. Several other companies offer local cable modem services. ** Six new ISP licenses were awarded by regulator Sutel in June 2009. The licenses include the right to provide

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

services.

Internet censorship and surveillance

There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

or Internet

chat rooms The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

without judicial oversight."Costa Rica"
''Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012'', Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State, 20 March 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2014. The constitution provides for freedom of speech and

press Press may refer to: Media * Print media or news media, commonly called "the press" * Printing press, commonly called "the press" * Press (newspaper), a list of newspapers * Press TV, an Iranian television network People * Press (surname), a fam ...

, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press. Individuals are generally free to criticize the government openly without reprisal. The law limits hate speech in publications with regard to ethnic origin, race, or color. The government continues to support legislation that imposes criminal penalties, including lengthy jail sentences instead of fines, for press infractions such as libel. Journalists believe such legislation promotes self-censorship. In July 2012 the president enacted Article 288, which includes amendments to the criminal code which establish a sentence of between four and eight years' imprisonment for any individual trying to obtain inappropriately secret political information. Journalists and media organizations criticized the law, arguing it restricted access to information of public interest.

References

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External links