COSTA RICA BUSINESS NEWS – After a bad start with Costa Rica, Millicom the international telecommunications and media company, came back in 2008 and this week announced the launch of its satellite pay-TV service.
The service is part of the “Tigo Star” branded range of services which launched in Latin America this year – in Bolivia in March and El Salvador in April – to promote the take-up of broadband, and cable and satellite pay-TV, first satellite Direct-to-Home (DTH) service.
Currently, Tigo is the first to offer access to multiplatform Video on Demand as well as the best digital and HD channel selection on the market. – Millicom website
The Costa Rica launch is simultaneous with a launch in Honduras.
Via satellite consumers in Costa Rica will now have a choice of over 70 channels, including premium sport and films, of which four are in HD.
Millicom’s first incursion in Costa Rica dates back to the mid 1990’s when Millicom de Costa Rica, in a deal with the Radiográfica Costarricense (RACSA), a subsidiary of Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), provided some 4.000 customers cellular telephone service.
In 1995, ICE disconnected Millicom in compliance with a ruling issued in October 1993 by the Constitutional Court, which outlawed the private operation of cellular telecommunications in the country. Despite attempts to by the U.S. government for a solution to the problem, in May 1995, Millicom Costa Rica, a division of the U.S. parent was out of business. – La Nacion, May 1995
In 2008, Millicom was once again back in Costa Rica, this time with the purchase of Amnet cable television for US$510 million dollars. Amnet, founded in 1968 in Halifax, Canada by Mike Kasma, entered the Costa Rica market in 1998 under the name “Cablecolor”. The deal gave Millicom increased access to customers in Central America where Amnet served subscribers in Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.
Millicom today operates under the brand name Tigo, the country’s leading service provider in cable television and broadband service, and the country’s first cable operator and also the first to offer digital and HD channels.
Millicom in Costa Rica also operates EASY TAXI, the easiest, best-priced way to book safe cabs online and travel.
