Costa Rica Mobile Quality Report

Introduction

The Costa Rican mobile market comprises several operators, of which three have their own networks with nation-wide coverage: Claro, Kölbi and Liberty. Thus, the network situation for these MNOs acts as a trustworthy barometer of the network situation in the country. A good knowledge of the network situation also allows the customers to perform fully informed decisions.

The objective of this report is to provide a summary of the network situation in Costa Rica for these three MNOs.

This report provides a quick overview of the network situation based on the following KPIs:

• Disconnection time: daily average minutes that the users from a MNO have had only emergency coverage or no coverage.
• 4G and 5G time: percentage of time that the users from a MNO have had 4G and, if available, 5G coverage (including 5G NSA and 5G SA).
• 5G penetration and usage: percentage of users that have 5G connectivity, percentage of time in 5G and percentage of active usage of 5G.
• Network status in the Common Coverage Area: an analysis of the network status, based on the signal strength and the signal quality, for the areas where all MNOs provide coverage.
• Call type: percentage of use of each call type by operator. This shows which technologies each of their customers primarily use.
• Mobile network latency: percentage of customers on different latency ranks. The ranks are selected according to several performance thresholds.

Summary

The Costa Rican telecommunications market is controlled by three operators with their own networks that together hold almost 100% of the market: Claro, Kölbi and Liberty.

In this competition to increase its customer base, Liberty is the number 1 operator in Costa Rica with 45,3% of the market. Following are Kölbi with 34% of the market and Claro with 20,7%.

The network performance of each operator has its differences compared to the others. We will analyze the performance of each of them:

If we take into account the disconnection time, Claro and Liberty are the operators that remains without coverage for the least amount of time.

Claro is the operator that offers 4G coverage to its users the longest, with 88% of the time, while Liberty is the one that offers the best quality of 4G coverage, both in area and in measurements.

If we look at the types of calls, Claro is the operator in which users use VoLTE the most in their calls (79%).

Finally, regarding latency, in general terms, Claro has better latency than its competitors, with 72% of its measurements being rated as at least good latency.

The main key figures are the following:

• The three main operators (Claro, Kölbi, Liberty) in Costa Rica provide 4G coverage to their customers at least 73% of the time.
• Commercial 5G is only available from Liberty in Costa Rica.
• Liberty is the operator that offers the best quality of 4G coverage, both in area and measurements.
• VoLTE calls are especially relevant for Claro, accounting for at least 79% of total calls.
• Claro is the operator that has the best latency for a decent experience in all possible types of use, with 72% of measurements rated at least good.

Methodology

In the following pages an in-depth description of each analyzed KPI can be found, including the methodology and rationale behind them.

At a more general level, the following paragraph describes the data collection methodology.

At a more general level, Weplan Analytics collects crowdsourced data from more than 200 million devices in 31 countries. For this analysis, 700 million measurements collected between June and August 2024 were used.

The following map shows the density of measurements taken throughout Costa Rica by Weplan Analytics.

As the three aforementioned MNOs serve their networks to other parties (such as VMNOs, due to roaming agreements or as part of emergency coverage) they have been filtered by the network provider reported in the SIM card.

More details about the methodology can be found here.

Connectivity

Connectivity: Daily disconnection time

The following graphic shows the disconnection time as the average number of minutes that each customer of each MNO experiences disconnections throughout the day.

Disconnection time includes moments when a customer has no coverage at all (such as underground parkings, inside elevators, so far away from an antenna that connection is not possible...) or moments when a customer only has emergency coverage, that is, the ability to perform only emergency calls.

This disconnected time may (and, in most cases, will) be discontinuous, and is the average of the daily disconnection time for all users.

Claro and Liberty are the operators that have the shortest daily disconnection time, tied with only 28 minutes per day.

Connectivity: 4G and 5G time

As a result of the development of 5G technology, legacy technologies such as the 2G and 3G networks are being turned off with the aim of freeing up electromagnetic spectrum to make room for more modern technologies such as 4G and 5G. This is because the frequencies are limited, so it is necessary to turn off the old ones so that the new ones can occupy those frequencies. Thus, one of the main objectives of operators is to guarantee at least adequate 4G coverage, and for those that already meet this objective, the focus turns to 5G.

Claro has the best 4G or higher coverage time for its customers, maintaining this coverage 88% of the time.

5G penetration and usage

Although the first 5G antenna was turned on on January 25, 2023 at the Rodrigo Facio University Campus as a proof of concept for the use of 5G, currently only Liberty has a commercial 5G network available to users.

This Liberty 5G network, which was officially launched on June 28, 2024, uses the 4G network core as a base, so it is not yet an independent network.

The government is expected to tender the mid-bands of 3.5 GHz, 2.6 GHz and the 26 GHz band, which will open up the possibilities of creating a fully independent 5G network.

Due to the short time that this 5G network has been available, the fact that it still requires the approval of terminals and that it is only available to postpaid users, the use of 5G by the population has not yet spread.

Currently, less than 1% of Liberty users have 5G, and only 6% of the time they are under 5G coverage, while 5% of the time they use this 5G coverage.

4G network status

There are two main network performance indicators used to address the network status: signal strength and signal quality. Each technology has its own measurements, but two great categories can be established:

• Very Good: the network performance for all usages should be excellent.
• Good: the network performance for all usages may present occasional difficulties but is good overall.
• Fair: most network network-dependent usages (such as calls or data usage) will have at least a decent performance.
• Degraded: network usage may be unstable and unreliable but allows for basic usage such as calls with acceptable quality and very slow data transfer rate.
• Very Degraded: apart from emergency calls network usage is nearly impossible.

There are two ways to analyze these categories: by percentage of covered area or by percentage of measurements.

Most measurements take place in urban areas, where coverage is better.

However, it is important to note that in most countries the majority of the territory is not urban, so the percentage of area with a problematic network situation may be different from the percentage of measurements with a problematic network situation.

Liberty is the operator with the best results with 72% of the area rated as at least fair. Following are Claro with 62% and Kölbi with 52%.

If you look at measurements instead of area, the general situation is very similar.

Liberty is the operator with the best results with 75% of the measurements are classified as, at least, fair. It is followed by Kölbi with 69% and Claro with 66%.

Call type percentage

Although 2G and 3G technologies allow the use of data, the development of 4G and 5G has left these technologies largely relegated to use in phone calls.

However, not all customers can benefit from VoLTE calls, since in order for them to be used, the following conditions must be met:

1. Your MNO must provide 4G and VoLTE.
2. They must have a phone capable of making VoLTE calls and a mobile plan that includes VoLTE.
3. Your phone must be approved by the MNO and the manufacturer to make VoLTE calls.

The last condition means that a customer, without changing their phone, can have VoLTE with one operator, but not have it with another. When a 4G connected customer without VoLTE capability (for any reason) attempts to make a call, a handover process to the 2G or 3G network occurs.

This process, depending on the method applied, is called CSFB (the most common) or SRVCC. In addition, there is also VoWiFi (Voice over Wi-Fi) technology, which is used when a Wi-Fi network is available.

VoLTE technology is the most used by Claro customers, with at least 79% of calls using this technology. It is followed by Liberty with 55% and Kölbi with 41%.

3G calls are still of great importance in Kölbi and Liberty, with 58% and 45% of calls made using this technology, respectively.

Latency status

Latency is the measurement of how much time it takes for the information to be transmitted between the user and the network. A lower latency means a faster, and smoother network experience, whereas a higher latency means that the network experience will not be as good, or even unusable. This makes latency a good indicator for user experience. We have divided latency in four main groups:

• Excellent latency: very smooth user experience, even with the most data-intensive usage, such as gaming or 4K streaming.
• Good latency: good user experience, although gaming may not be as fluid and 4K may present occasional problems.
• Degraded latency: mediocre user experience. Gaming and 4K are either uncomfortable or impossible, videochat may present noticeable lag, messaging with multimedia may take a long time to load and loading a web may be slow.
• Bad latency: essentially unusable network. Only the lightest usage, such as sending messages without multimedia works decently.

Claro presents the best results with 72% of their measurements rated at least good. Liberty follows closely with 67%, and finally Kölbi with 32% of measurements rated at least good.