Costa Rica
 

A friend just asked for a recommendation on Costa Rica. This is a country which I don't know that much about. It appears that neither the Icelandic or Jersey solutions work there. Does anyone have any idea what works best?

No personal experience. I rechecked CR a couple of months ago and it still seems that I.C.E. has the cellular monopoly and that they didn't have local prepaids. Celtrek also claims to work in CR and has pretty reasonable rates.

The question still remains though, will it actually work there. The following sims, and possibly others claim to work there....

Celtrek
Yackie
Maxroam
UM

I'd be tempted by a local SIM and callback for a few cents

But the info looks a bit sparse and I can't read enough Spanish

http://www.grupoice.com/esp/serv/per..._cel/index.htm

There is no prepaid by the only carrier there - govt. run I.C.E. You have to be an "official" resident to even get a line - and they are always in short supply. That will change in a couple years when the U.S./C.R. free trade agreement kicks in and new carriers can set up.
CelTrek has 19¢ incoming, 29¢ outgoing to U.S. Have used CelTrek there and works well. MaxRoam also covers C.R. UM lists C.R. but as I recall, rates are much higher. (My old UM card expired long ago. At the time they didn't cover C.R.)

...mike

P.S. C.R. is an 1800 only system. No 900 (or 1900).

I just got back from Costa Rica yesterday and my UM +423 Sim worked fine on the I.C.E. network.

Kupe

call id showed on display?

Hmmmm- let me think. I only used it with CBW, and I seem to recall it displayed my +423 number when I got the UM callback. So yes, I believe it did show Caller ID (though not 100% sure).

Kupe

The +423 does not generally have issues with caller id. The issues are mostly with Um+ (+447937)

What were you charged? Just curious. We are there often and do have an ICE phone. Actually, we now often use T-M's wifi/UMA service to make free calls to/from U.S.

...mike

Mike-

I was charged the CBW Liechtenstein mobile rate of .56/minute plus the UM incoming call rate for Costa Rica of .30/minute. That's slightly less than if I had used the UM outgoing rate for Costa Rica of $1.15/minute, but obviously wouldn't want to do a lot of yacking at either rate! ;)

Kupe

yackie sim
 

Hi,

This form has been mostly helpful, I'm traveling to Costa Rica tomorrow and based on info found here I bought a yackie sim, Celtrek has cheaper call rates and no free incoming, but on initial purchase Yackie was less expensive, because Celtrek does charge for the sim..

On second thought though I should have gone with CelTrek as call rates are less expensive than Yackie plus callback to yackie's free incoming is hardly an option because rates to Iceland mobile are quite high so I'll just have to use the yackie sim as is. I wish local calls within Costa Rica was cheaper.

Anyway, too late now, I will let you guys now how it works out.

edit: just checked and rates in neighboring countries such as Panama, el Salvador, is a lot cheaper with yackie.

If you have a chance to ask about plans for prepaid in the future, please report back what you learn.