Costa Rica

4G Availability becomes Movistar’s weapon in improving its overall user experience, emerging as the winning operator in this metric since our last report’s draw. Since our other metrics are affected by whether the user is connected to 4G, a higher 4G Availability can help improve overall scores. This is because overall scores take both 3G and 4G measurements into account, and the latter tend to be higher. Growing almost 4 percentage points since our last report, Movistar is now just 1.2 points away from the 75% milestone and the only operator where our users were able to connect to 4G more than 70% of the time.

However, the biggest change we see in our 4G Availability is from Claro, whose score jumped by 11.3 points, effectively boosting the time users can connect to 4G from just over half the time to close to two thirds of the time. This should help Claro relieve some of the congestion on its 3G network and make it easier to improve its scores in other metrics through a larger share of its measurements coming from 4G.

Kölbi meanwhile only improved its score by 1.2 points, with our users spending 70% of time on 4G. If this trend continues for the three operators, we can expect Claro to reach second place in 4G Availability. Better yet, the underdog might even find itself competing for first place in our next report.

No surprises in Video Experience, as operators slightly increased their scores at an even pace, pushing their past scores by about 6-7 points (out of 100). We saw larger increases — of up to 9 points — in the 3G Video Experience of our Costa Rican users, but lesser improvements in their 4G scores, which increased by just 2-4 points. As a result, the only category change that took place since the last report was that Kölbi’s 3G Video Experience is now above 40 points, meaning users on Kölbi are the first Costa Rican users to see a Fair quality Video Experience using 3G.

Claro was the biggest overall gainer, having increased its score by 7.7 points since the last report, while only improving 4G Video Experience by 2.2 points. At least part of this increase can be attributed to Claro’s leap in 4G Availability, which meant our users spent more time watching videos on 4G rather than 3G, hence achieving a better overall score. At the same time, the jump in 4G Availability means there was less time spent watching videos on 3G than before, likely easing some of the congestion on Claro’s 3G network and partly explaining the growth in its 3G Video Experience score.

Our first look at Costa Rican Voice App Experience sees Claro and Kölbi in a stalemate on the edge of the Acceptable ranking, with just 0.2 points separating Kölbi’s users from the 74 point mark. Movistar is 5 points behind Claro and falls in the Poor ranking. While these scores appear close, Claro’s 3G Voice App Experience is in fact better than Movistar’s overall, showing that there is a significant gap for Movistar to bridge before users on its network can access similar quality VoIP calls.

Opensignal's Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger — as experienced on 3G connections, 4G connections and overall, across operators.

Kölbi is uncontested when it comes to Download Speed Experience, as the state-owned operator basks in an overall speed of 17.7 Mbps experienced by our users. Its competitors can be found with user speeds that are approximately 10 Mbps slower, with Movistar and Claro fighting it out for second place at 7.3 and 7.8 Mbps respectively. Kölbi solidified its lead by increasing users’ 4G Download Speed from 23.5 Mbps to 26.0 since our last report, while Claro increased users’ speed by just under 1 Mbps, and Movistar by only 0.2 Mbps.

Download Speed in Costa Rica has come a long way. Just two years ago, Opensignal reported dismal 4G speeds of under 7 Mbps, which ranked it among the slowest countries we looked at. Today, our users on all three operators enjoyed over 7 Mbps in overall speed, and over 10 Mbps in 4G Download Speed.

At 6.2 Mbps, Kölbi remains the reigning champion in this metric, even as Claro improved their users’ Upload Speed Experience by 1.4 Mbps to now reach 4.6 Mbps. This leaves Movistar in third place with an overall speed of 4.0 Mbps. Upload speed is arguably a more relevant indicator of a user’s mobile network experience each year, as it gradually became more important for users to be able to upload their content online without needing to wait a long time.

While our Kölbi and Claro users saw overall speed grow by about 1 Mbps through both faster 3G and 4G Upload Speed, Movistar’s users’ 3G and 4G Upload Speeds are essentially unchanged. Instead, Movistar’s growth in overall upload speed of 0.4 Mbps can be attributed to the increased time our users on its network spent connected to 4G.

In Latency Experience, Movistar caught up with Kölbi and forced a draw, snatching its second award in this report. Although our last report saw Kölbi win Latency Experience by 2.9ms, and despite Kölbi’s ongoing efforts to improve its latency, the incumbent operator has not managed to stop Movistar from catching up. Movistar’s users’ 3G Latency was 5.4ms faster, while its 4G Latency also drastically improved since May, by almost 9ms. Claro was nowhere near in this report, despite improving its overall score by 10.3 points. At 68.5ms, it is exactly 20ms slower than Movistar, and is slow even when compared to the 3G Latency of its competitors.

Latency Experience in Costa Rica is fairly robust. The tied winners in fact scored higher than their Mexican neighbors to the north, where the fastest Latency Experience was 59ms on Telcel. Perhaps even more impressive is that Movistar and Kölbi’s Latency score beats that of U.S. operators, where T-Mobile and AT&T last drew with 52.5ms.