Country Code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term '' ...

: +506

International Call Prefix An international call prefix, international dial-out code or international direct dial code (IDD code) is a trunk prefix that indicates an International call, international phone call. In the dialling sequence, the prefix precedes the country call ...

: 00 Number plan type: closed As of 2010 the government body in charge of allocations is the Superintendencia de Telecomunicacione
SUTEL
(In Spanish)

History of allocations

Prefix 00 was reserved for international calls, while prefix 9 was assigned to special numbers, such as

9-1-1 , usually written 911, is an emergency telephone number for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palau, Argentina, Philippines, Jordan, as well as the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency nu ...

Toll-free number A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...

s start with 800 followed by 7 digits while premium-rate numbers start with 900 followed by 7 digits. Before 1994, all

phone numbers A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

in Costa Rica were six digits long. The

Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad ( en, Costa Rican Institute of Electricity) (ICE) is the Costa Rican government-run electricity and telecommunications services provider. Together with the Radiographic Costarricense SA (RACSA) and Compañ ...

, which at that time had the monopoly on telecommunications, introduced a system in which the telephone numbers in every

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

were assigned a prefix to make them 7 digits long. This numbering system was effective for some time. However, the boom of mobile phone customers since the introduction of

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...

around 2000 and the expansion of metropolitan areas caused a serious shortage of available numbers. Thus many GSM-based customers used numbers starting with 3 and many residents of San Jose province had telephone numbers starting with prefixes other than 2. Since March 20, 2008, a renewed numbering system added the prefix 2 for all

landline A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

s and 8 for all

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

numbers. This system was implemented in order to face the introduction of 1.5 million 3G

W-CDMA The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the Inte ...

customers in Q1 2009. The transition to 8-digit numbers was heavily publicized in

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

n media. However, the change caused considerable confusion among foreigners. Also, all calls dialed using the old 7-digit version of the phone number are automatically redirected to a voice message with information about the change. In 2010, after the end of the government monopoly in telecommunications, prefixes 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 were assigned to private operators. 8-digit numbers are commonly written one of two ways: "xxxxxxxx" or "xxxx-xxxx"

Current Costa Rica number plan

Special Costa Rica numbers

References

Sources

SUTEL Registro de Numeración
(In Spanish)
SUTEL Plan Nacional de Numeración
(In Spanish)

External links

800 Toll Free Numbers Costa Rica
- Phonebook Database {{North America topic, Telephone numbers in

Costa Rica communications-related lists Telecommunications in Costa Rica