Costa Rica stands out in Central America for the quality and volume of goods and services related to technology which it produces and exports. However, infrastructure dedicated to digital communications over the Internet, has lagged behind and threatens what has been achieved so far by the country. Being a country that is committed to being a center of outsourcing of business services, it has not paid enough attention to the issue.

An article in Elfinancierocr.com reports on the results of the State of The Internet report, by Akamai, "... Costa Rica is located at position 94 in the world ranking of countries for its average internet speed in the fourth quarter of 2014, which is located below nine Latin American countries and barely ahead of Venezuela, Paraguay and Bolivia. "

"... In the ranking, the country is overtaken in Latin America by Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Panama, which show average speeds of 2.9 Mbps and 5.9 Mbps. "

Akamai's report notes that in Costa Rica 86% of Internet connections are less than 4Mbps.

See: State of The Internet, Akamai

More on this topic

Costa Rica and its Never Ending Internet Shortcomings

November 2017

The country is also losing competitiveness because of its internet services, with average speeds reported of just 6.9 Mbps on the 4G network, far away from the world average and below the rest of Central America.

A report by the international company OpenSignal reports that Costa Rica's 4G network has the worst average global speed, just above India, where the average speed of the 4G network is 6.13 Mbps. 

Panama, Costa Rica and Access to Internet

March 2017

The Akamai report for the fourth quarter of 2016, notes that compared to the previous quarter, there was an increase of 10% on the average internet connection speed in Panama and a reduction of 1.2% in Costa Rica.

Although average internet access speed  (IPv4) remains very low compared to other Latin American countries and other regions, the "Akamai State of the Internet IVQ 2016" report, states that both countries saw increases compared to the same quarter of 2015. Costa Rica registered an interannual increase of 15%, while in Panama the interannual increase was 47%.

Costa Rica Also Lags Behind on Internet

September 2016

A report by Akamai highlights an 8.4% drop in the average connection speed in Costa Rica in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.

Between late 2014 and June this year, Costa Rica fell 20 positions in the ranking of broadband Internet, surpassing only Paraguay, Bolivia and Venezuela.  Panama recorded a slight growth of 1% in the period in question, while Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, did not even figure in the report.

Nicaragua's Telecommunications Market

November 2013

From 2009 to date, the local market has grown by 37% to around $700 and $800 million per year, distributed between Claro, Movistar and Yota.

Currently there are 287,618 landlines, 4.8 million cell phone lines and 143,000 Internet connections in the country.

In 2009, Robert Sanson, CEO of Claro Nicaragua said the market turned over about $500 million annually.