Telephone numbers in Costa Rica

Country Code: 506

Before 1994, all phone numbers in Costa Rica were six digits long, but increasing demand of lines impelled the national electricity and telecommunications monopoly, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, to introduce a system in which the telephone numbers in every province were assigned a prefix as follows:

Plus, two other prefixes for mobile phone numbers

Prefix 00 was reserved for international calls, while prefix 9 was assigned to special numbers, such as 9-1-1. Toll-free numbers starts with 800 followed by 7 digits while premium rate numbers starts with 900 followed by 7 digits.

This numbering system was effective for some time. However, the boom of mobile phone customers since the introduction of GSM around 2000 and the expansion of metropolitan areas caused a serious shortage of available numbers. Thus many GSM-based customers have to use a number starting with 3 and many residents of San Jose province have telephone numbers starting with prefixes other than 2.

Since March 20, 2008, a renewed numbering system added the prefix 2 for all landlines and 8 for all mobile phone numbers. This system was implemented in order to face the introduction of 1,5 million 3G W-CDMA due to Q1 2009. The transition to 8-digit based was heavily publicized on Costa Rican media. However, the change caused some confusion among many foreigners. Also, all calls dialed using the old 7-digit version of the phone number are automatically redirected to a voice message informing about the change.

8 digit numbers are commonly written two ways: "xxxx xxxx" or "xx xx xx xx"

[+] Current Costa Rican Numeration Plan

• NOTE:

The Numbers with Prefix 25XX Might be seen also in San Jose and Heredia since all numbers with 22XX has been almost depleted.

Special Costa Rica Numbers

Sources:

http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/02/02/T02020000300001MSWS.doc (In Spanish) http://www.minae.go.cr/acerca/viceministro/DE-%2035187-MINAET%20Plan%20de%20Numeracion.pdf (In Spanish)