Costa Rica Primed For Mobile Telephony

Signals Telecom Consulting, a Latin American and Caribbean telecommunications markets consulting and research firm has just published their second edition of its “Mobile Market Analysis – Costa Rica”. This report is part of Signal’s “Mobile Telephony Services in Central America” series. In this study, Signals analyzes the Costa Rican mobile services market and the potential impact of the opening up of the local telecommunications sector. At year-end 2007, Costa Rica surpassed the 1.76 million mark of mobile users. Delays caused by pending legal matters, however, had left the country with a high level of pent-up demand. Signals believes that although the LGT passage is the first step towards speeding up of ICE services contracting processes, the operator will need to focus its attention on diversifying its services offering, increasing tariffs segmentation and improving its public marketing efforts in order to face up to competition from newcomers. José F. Otero, Signals Telecom Consulting President and co-author of the study, added, “It is important to highlight the fact that although this is a state-owned company, that does not mean it lacks the ability to successfully compete against incoming competitors. For example, Uruguay implemented a model in which the state-run telecom operator Antel / Ancel is run as if it were a private enterprise.”