www.CostaRicaTicas.com

I am searching for a new cell phone service and want to know which service works best in CR , San Jose more specific ?

Verizon works great for me. Roaming mode on Claro network, I get strong signal and no International surcharge.

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If you see me at the bottom, please bring me my running shoes!

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If you let the devil ride, he's gonna want to drive

We use Movistar, Kolbi, and Claro. It depends on what you need. Kolbi hands down has the coverage, Movistar is nice where you can call someone that has no minutes and they can talk as long as you have minutes. Claro fills in the void when Kolbi has issues. As for in the US I have been with Consumer Cellular for over 2 years now. If you go international you need them to send you a temporary chip that is good for a month. I take my chip out when I get close to CR and switch out to my Kolbi one so I can make calls immediately upon landing. If you get a chip in CR you will need to add $$ to it via internet if you do not use it for 2 1/2 months or they will cancel your account and take the balance. If you use the phone or have a transaction by adding money to it every couple of months you are good. For the record we were in a remote part of Alaska and Verizon was spotty, and AT&T was only marginally better, my consumer cellular was 3 plus bars the majority of the time and I had my phone set up as a hotspot so my friends could use my data as I had a good connection. At 40.00 per month, I am quite happy with them.

Mirroring this sentiment. I was in CR last year and had perfect connectivity through Claro with Verizon's unlimited Go plan — the $60 USD one with unlimited data, talk, and text. They have discounts if you're a senior or veteran. Ask them! I think they charged me a daily fee for roaming though. Has that policy changed, or otherwise how did you avoid it?

I think they have an agreement with Claro. Not 100% sure, but all texts and calls were free. It used to be 10 bucks a day when I roamed on Kolbi or Movistar. I always turn roaming data off and use wifi for data/internet.

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If you see me at the bottom, please bring me my running shoes!

I have T-Mobile which has always worked fine in CR. Texts and data are free. Free data is 2G which is glacially slow, but all my usual hangouts have free wifi. Calls back to US at $0.25 per minute. You can upgrade to faster data and unlimited calls for $5 per day. I do this when I know I have conference calls for work scheduled that are likely to exceed 20min. You can buy in one day increments.

One suggestion if you are going to rely on GPS and google maps. Download maps before while on wifi. If you are out in SJ and not sure exactly where you are, 2G speed will take forever to download the map.

Which US carrier to use was a much bigger issue a few years ago. There used to be different versions of phones based on carrier, GSM or CDMA. International locations all used GSM. If you had a Verizon phone on CDMA it was not going to be able to roam in CR.

Newer phones are all able to work on all networks. You may notice when you buy an iphone from apple they no longer have options based on carriers. They now have one phone that works with all networks.

That leaves which plan works best for your intended use. They all post their international features and prices. Find what is best for you.

Damn, I think I'm about to change plans.
I'm on AT&T who just recently upped my $56 monthly to $60 monthly, but upped my data to 8gig. .. but shit, unlimited data is music ( shakira, hopefully near-topless ) to my ears.

My buddy and I both have Google Fi. Worked perfectly in San Jose for both of us, including for Uber. Certainly you can find cheaper plans if you never leave home, but you won't find a better carrier if you travel a lot. $20 base price, plus $10 per gig (prorated for unused data). Or you can pay $70 for unlimited data (up to 20-some gigs, then throttled). Works in basically every country just like being in the US, full speed LTE, although when you're abroad it's like 20 cents per minute to talk on the phone unless you're on wifi.

I used T-Mobile and it was just $5 extra per day for international data. This was last year, May 2019

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- KB