QCOSTARICA – Consumers in Costa Rica follow the global trend in telecommunications and now consume more data than voice, according to Sutel’s 2019 State of Telecommunications Report.
The total revenues of the sector were for ¢760 billion colones last year, a slight nominal increase of 0.32% compared to 2018, which shows a contraction of the market and the possible impact by other factors, a trend consistent with the decrease in national productive activity in the last two years.
Regarding revenues by type of service, it was observed that fixed telephony (traditional and IP) and mobile telephony (voice and text messages) show a downward trend for the third consecutive year.
The case of mobile telephony stands out, which fell by 12.2% in the previous year, but not in the Internet access service as a whole –data transfer and dedicated lines– where the trend was rather to grow with 10, 2% and 17%, respectively.
For 2019, data transfer revenues almost doubled mobile telephony revenues, this service being the one that led the weight of revenues, which validates the existence of a change in the consumption rates of current telecommunications users.
Some 148 companies had permission to provide some service before the Superintendency of Telecommunications (Sutel), that is, three less than in 2018.
The change coincides with the first decade of effective opening and the expiration of the 10-year concession for the exploitation of these services for some companies.
Source: La Republica / Sutel