Country on target to reach 2010 broadband goal

Friday, Dec 12, 2008

Costa Rica needs just 145,000 more broadband internet connections to reach the 2010 goal set by the government, according to Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO).

Cisco's broadband barometer, carried out by consultancy IDC, showed that at midyear Costa Rica's broadband penetration had increased by 22% year on year to 180,167 connections.

""The country is maintaining adequate growth levels, which it ought to sustain if it wants to reach its goal of 325,000 broadband connections in 2010,"" Cisco's Central America manager, Jorge Rodríguez, said.

Costa Rica, however, has some of the lowest broadband speeds in the region with 47.1% of connections at 256 Kbps or less. This is due in part to the fact that the cost of broadband connections of 1 Mbps or more is among the highest in Latin America.

There were 979 WiMax connections at the end of the first six months of availability.

The rate of accessing the internet using a mobile phone was included in the study for the first time and showed that only 3.4% of all cell phone users access the internet from their phone.

State telecoms monopoly ICE is planning to install 950,000 3G lines by mid-2009, and it has also said it plans to reduce residential internet rates by 24-38% starting in January.

Internet and mobile telephony are the two areas of telephony that are due to be liberalized next year as part of the Central American and Dominican Republic free trade agreement with the US (Cafta-DR).

Alexander Mora, president of Costa Rica's IT and telecoms association Camtic, told BNamericas that he has no doubt that Costa Rica will meet the 2010 broadband goals, especially once competition is opened up.

In addition to competition, local content will be an essential element for stimulating greater use of the internet.

""I think the Costa Rican population, due to the levels of education, is ready for an intense and relatively sophisticated use of broadband, but that requires more content,"" Mora said.

The executive added that it was a shame that this year?s reforms to telecommunications legislation did not make requirements for content sharing with television and radio, as that would have set the scene for a ""true explosion"" in internet.

Source: Bnamericas