Living Costs

Electricity:

ICE, the government owned power utility, provides electrical power to the entire country. The costs are about 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Monthly costs for the average house runs about $20.00 to $30.00 per month. The exceptions to this are, if you just have to have air conditioning or you live in the mountains and need electric heaters to take the morning chill away.

Cooking can be done with electric or gas ranges (propane, sorry no natural gas). Gas can be purchased from your local supermarket in the small tanks or the larger 100 liter tanks can also be used. Your neighborhood gas supplier will deliver large or small tanks for a small charge. Average usage for cooking with a small tank is about one month, the big tank should last 8 months to a year.

Gas is one of those items with a fixed price from the government. Expect to pay a deposit for every tank you have and also purchase the regulator, hose, fittings, etc. A good idea is to use a large tank and keep a small tank as a back-up. Knowing you never run out of gas on a normal work day.

Every community has a local gas supplier who will be happy to set you up for gas to your range and/or dryer. They are good and their prices fair.

Water Service

Yet another government utility, "A&A" (Acueductos & Alcantarillados) (Water & Sewer). Unless you have a swimming pool, water should be about $15.00 per month. All homes on A&A have meters. Many rural properties also have well water along with city water. Living on the beach in Puntarenas, we used our well to fill the pool and irrigate the lawn and garden. Drinking well water from a shallow untreated well is not a good idea. Here are the prices for the water.

Telephones & Internet:
 

You guessed it, another government utility, there is hope however. Plans call to "privatize" the phone and electric monopolies. Don't hold your breath!

Telephone - be wary of a house or land that does not have a phone line installed. Getting a new phone line installed, depending on where you're located, can take years. If you must have a phone, be sure to buy real estate with an existing phone line or assure yourself that you can have a line installed in your lifetime.

These are the rates approved to Oct. 2.004: (In Spanish)

Telephone costs are reasonable. A typical monthly phone bill, excluding of course,  overseas calls, runs about $20.00 per month.

Long distance calls from Costa Rica are very costly (typically a $1.00 a minute to the US or Canada). The good news is that there are several service companies here that can connect you to the North for less, and even free via the Internet.

Cellular phones

Cellular phones cost the same as home phones as long as you use no more than 60 minutes a month of "air time". The big difference here is that you pay only for your outgoing calls. The caller pays for your inbound calls. Cell phones are readily available, but costly. Bring your digital cell phone here and it will work. The cellular network is good throughout most of the country, and is continually expanding.

These are the official rates approved for the end of 2.004 for the Aresep www.aresep.go.cr for the cellular phones (sorry, no translation to English yet):

Internet Service

Internet is the network with the largest world wide coverage. It connects millions of users and allows access to countless information source’s.

Nowadays the network not only provides information through text pages, but also includes graphics, images, sounds and videos. What it makes is a nice environment with easy access.

One of the ways to access the service is through a phone call (exchanged connection), using a modem installed in the user computer, a connection is made to the access points available through RACSA.

At this time, accessing Internet means being in contact with the world. There are other advantages that the network provides which are:

* Low cost access.
* Worldwide coverage.
* Updated information.
* Access to a great variety of services of great value.
* File transfers.
* E-mail
* Discussion Forums
* Corporate Network Access (Intranet/Extranet)
* General Commerce.
* A perfect medium to establish international contact.

RACSA offers a great variety of connection packages via telephone, moldable to different customer needs. The access charges to the Internet DO NOT include phone charges

Cable TV!

I hate to sound redundant, sorry, depending on where you live, cable TV is available.

The bigger the city the better the cable service. CNN, HBO, etc. are on the cable.
Cable television access service
(Cable MODEM)



Accessing the Internet through the coaxial television cable network (Cable Modem) is a system that allows the transference of information to and from the net using the same reception platform as cable television. The connection is done by dividing the signal the customer gets into an Internet connection to his computer and a television signal to his TV set.

Benefits:

The main benefit of this service is that it allows the user to download information from the Internet up to 3 times faster than the conventional telephone connection. In addition, this two-way communication system allows the user to obtain the service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without additional cost given that there is no telephone line use (billing).


Characteristics:

This service works through a high speed connection between RACSA's Internet and the Cable TV Service providers - AMNET and Cable Tica - where the customers of these businesses may access RACSA's Internet through a coaxial cable provided by the Cable TV Service companies.


This service has two access modes:


* One way
* Two ways


One way:

The user's computer must be connected to the cable modem as well as the telephone line. Data transmitted from the Internet to the equipment will be transported through the coaxial cable. Data transmitted to the Internet will use the telephone line. Maximum download speed will be 64 Kbps.

Two ways:

In this case data transmitted to and from the Internet will use the coaxial cable. User's hardware needs to be connected solely to the cable modem. This mode does not make use of the telephone line.

Requirements:

PC Users:

Pentium II / Cyrix 200 Mhz / AMD K6, 200 MB free hard drive space, 32 MB Ram
Ethernet Card 10 Base T (included in the installation cost)

Macintosh Users:

68030 Processor, 200 MB free hard drive space, 32 MB RAM Memory, PowerPC / G3 / G4

Pay the Bills

All utility bills can be paid in several ways. Most major supermarkets, most banks, or your handy credit card. No fancy payment envelopes to mail, besides your utility would probably be disconnected before the mail made it. Forget about the horror stories you've heard, it's not a big deal to pay your bills! Most all bills are out the 15th of each month and usually due in 10 days.