Talk:Costa Rica/@comment-201.202.103.134-20191114175425

Hi, an update from November 2019:

Kolbi/ICE definitely has the best coverage. This will often be 3G though, but that network is not overly congested. It's pretty snappy for 3G and VOIP call quality (WhatsApp) is pretty good and stable. They run 4G/LTE on band 7 and newer locations and central valley also includes band 3 and sometimes 3+7 carrier aggregation (35 MHz). In some places they do a 7+7 carrier aggregation (40 MHz). The amount of cell sites is crazy high.

Movistar seems to be number two and has better LTE coverage than Kolbi/ICE because it has band 3 available everywhere (better coverage than band 7). So you will find more LTE coverage and on some places also better 3G coverage than Kolbi (850+2100 MHz). However in the outer regions sometimes you will find no Movistar and only Kolbi 3G. Movistar also uses band 1 in the Central Valley, combined with band 3.

For Claro I have less experience, but my phone which was roaming liked to switch to Movistar more often. I believe they also use a combination of band 3 + 1. Have not seen carrier aggregation in action for Claro and Movistar. Experienced network congestion through my roaming provider but it seems likely that that was a problem in my home network at the time.

Checking your data usage on ICE/Kolbi is easy: *888#, then 3 (Internet Movil), 3 (Consulta Internet), 1 (Consulta Internet), and you'll get both a push message and SMS with your remaining MB/GB balance.