Telecommunications
The Costa Rican state electronics company, ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) provides international telephone, fax and Internet services via RACSA , the telecommunications subsidiary. To make international calls , you can call collect from any phone or payphone in Costa Rica; simply dial 09 or 116 to get an English-speaking operator, followed by the country code, area code and number. AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Canada Direct or UK Direct calling-card holders can make credit-card calls from payphones. It's not a good idea to use a payphone to make international calls with colones - it's better to call from a hotel (though this can be expensive), a local pulperia (general store) or from the San Jose Radiografica office, where you can also send and receive faxes, and use directories. Microchip telephone cards allow you to use special "Chip" payphones to make local calls ; you can make international calls with the larger denomination cards but they won't give you much more than three or four minutes' speaking time. The country code for the whole of Costa Rica is 506. There are no area codes and all phone numbers have seven digits.
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