Costa Rica Calling Cards
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Many phone companies throughout the world do sell calling cards to call Costa Rica; you can pick the amount of minutes and the price range you would like to acquire as well. There are many choices of prepaid calling cards, Costa Rica however, has a monopoly in the communications services and the only Costa Rica calling cards available to make international phone calls from Costa Rica itself are sold by the ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) together with RACSA (Radiografica Costarricense S.A). Foreign calling cards might work for a little while, but once they are tracked they will be blocked. So it will be better to play it safe and acquire your calling card once you arrive in Costa Rica.
There are three types of prepaid telephone cards:
- Colibrí 197 card (500 colones and 1000 colones versions)
- Viajera Internacional 199 ($10 and $20 USD or 3000 colones)
- CHIP (1000 colones and 2000 colones)
There is currently a plan to provide pre paid cell phone cards for usage with any of the homologated cell phones in Costa Rica.
The prepaid phone cards used in Costa Rica are given out by the ICE, the telecommunications government run monopoly. The Cards are called Colibri 197 for domestic calls, the Tarjeta Viajera Internacional 199 (for international calls) and the CHIP cards which house a microchip in their insides. The instructions in the 197 card are in Spanish on the card and on the system and you have to use it on a tone phone. The 199 cards you can purchase in dollars or colones and only allow calls from Costa Rica to the outside, you cannot call Costa Rica with this card from overseas. Instructions are both in English and Spanish. For both National and International Calls, the CHIP cards can be used. However, to use these cards you need to be at a special blue phone marked CHIP on top. The flexibility of this card is offset by the fact that it is hard to find the telephones that work with them. You can buy it at service agencies, banks and authorized distributors which will have signs with their hummingbird logo posted so you can recognize them. We hope we have cleared your doubts regarding calling Costa Rica internationally and calling cards in general. If you have any other questions don’t hesitate to contact our travel advisors for tips, hints and assistance.
