Although Costa Rica has adopted a very proactive stance in terms of promoting wireless data networks as a means to bridge the digital divide, the current Long Term Evolution (LTE) strategy is one of the most deficient in the world.

According to the State of LTE report published by the developers of the crowdsourced OpenSignal mobile app in February, the LTE spectrum in Costa Rica needs a lot more development to compete against the likes of Singapore and South Korea. The network coverage and performance of the largest LTE provider in Costa Rica, Kolbi ICE, leave a lot to be desired: Not only is Costa Rica the worst in the Americas, it is only marginally better than countries such as Sri Lanka and Iran, which are at the bottom of the global report.

To understand just how far Costa Rica is down the State of LTE report, consider the following. Singapore is the fastest country in terms of median LTE download speeds of 37 Mbps. The top LTE speed reported by the OpenSignal app in Costa Rica is just 3 Mbps. In the Americas, the fastest commercial LTE network is SaskTel of Canada, which can deliver speeds of 35 Mbps.

The country with the best LTE infrastructural coverage is South Korea with an astonishing 97 percent. Costa Rica, on the other hand, has a coverage of about 41 percent, the same as Ecuador and only better than Sri Lanka. Guatemala has the best LTE coverage in Central America with 57 percent, provided by Tigo. The United States has the same coverage as Uruguay at 81 percent, but the South American nation enjoys faster download speeds through its Antel network.

Although Ecuador’s LTE coverage is about the same as Costa Rica, its CNT network is the fastest in Latin America with 17 Mbps download speeds, which means it is faster than T-Mobile, the leading LTE network in the United States.