The Costa Rica News (TCRN) – Costa Rica climbed five positions in the Index Development of information and communication technologies (IDI), surpassing powers in the region such as Brazil, according to the report “Measuring the Information Society 2013” released Monday by the International Union Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The IDI ranks 157 countries according to their level of access, use, and knowledge of information technology and communications. The report compares the rankings from the years 2011 and 2012.
Costa Rica improved their IDI by 0.56, almost three times the global average rise, identifying the country in the most dynamic group of nations who have improved more than the average in the classification or IDI value over the past 12 months.
The group includes (from most to least improvement) the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Barbados, Seychelles, Belarus, Costa Rica, Mongolia, Zambia, Australia, Bangladesh, Oman, and Zimbabwe.
For ITU, breaking the cell phone monopoly in November 2011 has been the factor that favored the advancement in the measurement.
The organization, which is a United Nations agency, said that Costa Rica had “strong growth” in mobile service contracts since that time (market entry competition). According to the report, cell phone penetration exceeded the number of inhabitants and remained at 128% at the end of 2012.
The penetration of mobile broadband Internet also experienced “significant growth”, with the three operators (Claro, Movistar, ICE) offering 3G plans for prepaid and postpaid.
The ITU expects there will be new changes in the mobile market with the expected introduction of number portability in November of 2013.
It also highlights the increase in the number of households with Internet access, where penetration grew from 34% in 2011 to 47% in 2012.
The Costa Rica News (TCRN)
San Jose Costa Rica
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