Internet Access in Costa Rica 2016

Costa Rica continues to lag the competition as other nations offer their populations access to much faster Internet much faster than is available to the average Costa Rican.

Last year the country was amongst the last offering the slowest access speeds according to a ‘State of the Internet’ report by Akamai Technologies.

In this study Costa Rica fell from a position of 94-102 by the end of 2015 with an average Internet speed of 3.4Mbs (megabits per second) against the global average of 5.6Mbs.

The report alerts us to the fact that the quality the Internet today is one of the main attractions for doing business, attracting investments, improving education and streamlining public services.

“It’s a blow to the competitiveness and reflects slow progress in broadband connections. In 2001, Costa Rica was at the top of countries with better connection competing with with powers like South Korea,” said Rosalia Morales, executive director of NIC Costa Rica.

“The country can not continue investing only in mobile connections, you must create fixed bandwidth connections with quality. The education and health services sector and the business sector need competitive speeds to move forward.”

Leda Muñoz, executive director of the Omar Dengo Foundation, states that Costa Rica has the right conditions to take a big leap forward in education, but is locked by “a lack of broadband in schools which is relatively easy to overcome considering the infrastructure connectivity already exists in the country.”

Without excuses. Marcelo Jenkins, Minister of Science, Technology and Telecommunications, admitted the depth of backwardness:

“We are bad. So, we’re aggressively going after the issue of broadband fiber optic to the home. Other technologies relying on copper networks are already obsolete. The move to fiber optics is necessary,”Jenkins said, noting that the Government hopes to have 1.5 million such connections within one year.”

To achieve this goal, the Government will submit within three weeks a financing plan to the Central American Bank for Economic Integration.

PS. As of 4th May 2016 as you can see from the screenshot above, I have 8.63Mbs download speed and 9.27Mbs upload speed however, I do pay close to $200 per month for this…

Thanks to our friends at La Nación – Costa Rica’s largest and most influential Spanish circulation newspaper for their permission to summarize their articles which originally appeared at Se agudiza rezago del país por velocidad de Internet.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.