Across a tiny paradise called Costa Rica, we are proud to be part of the “Espacios Públicos Conectados” project, which the main objective is to deploy a countrywide access network trough WiFi technology all over Costa Rica providing public access to the Internet in public places such as Main Squares and others managed by the Municipalities, train stations, public libraries, sports venues, national parks and community centers where the general public enjoy the service for free., as you could see on the following pictures.

As any good endeavor worth accomplish and in order to evenly cover most of the counties in Costa Rica and ensure free WiFi access to less fortunate citizens, we had defined aid periods where this program will assume the costs of the services in periods of 3, 5 or 7 years depending on statistical analysis on social development for each of the 82 counties where the country is politically divided, providing free WiFi access to the end-users.

https://ziiparatodos.sutel.go.cr/sitios.html

• Costa Rica

• Youth
• Older persons
• Women
• People with disabilities
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Migrants
• Remote and rural communities

In the midst of the challenging times we all are facing, internet access has become a human right that allows us to communicate with our loved ones, to keep working without affecting productivity, and allowing students of all ages to continue with their personal and educational development. From that standpoint, in terms of project performance, since the public launch of our program, we had provided free WiFi access to more than 440.000 people through 441 public hotspots across Costa Rica, this deployment can be replicated in most of the countries in the world where there is a clear strategy to encourage social mobility through technology and through the information and communication technologies.

This project had impacted so many people and improve the quality of living of some many that we estimate that before the end of October 2020 we will be serving more than 10% of the overall population, where we will be connecting half a million unconnected people without jeopardizing the health of the users by implementing and following health recommendations from national authorities.

This challenging undertaking has been possible by the commitment and support from several local Telecommunications companies who had been supported by the universal services fund FONATEL (Fondo Nacional de Telecomunicaciones in Spanish) to increase their footprint at zones with low commercial value and complete the deployment of our hotspots nationwide, simultaneously on three different fronts and focusing especially on low income and vulnerable areas where the need for Internet access is crucial and becomes a real development enabler. In the following chart, you would find how the funds will be distributed yearly in order to provide free WiFi service to all the public places covered by our program.

By encouraging a "connected society" through our nationwide network "Zii para todos" we expect to support and reduce the carbon footprint following the national strategy: "Plan Nacional de Descarbonización", Descarboniztion National Plan in Spanish.

The current global pandemic had demonstrated that through internet access almost any economic activity can be executed and maintained without physically move from your location, which helps to reduce carbon emissions and reduce wastes.

This project is the germ for a bigger and integral modernization plan that considers fiber optics deployment, smart cities development, digital transformation in the public sector and communities, and setting the cornerstone for 5G for the whole subregion.

Our project "Espacios Públicos Conectados" promotes the "An Information Society for All" WSIS' value mainly in the following aspects that describe this value: - The role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development. - Information and communication infrastructure: an essential foundation for an inclusive information society. - Access to information and knowledge. - Capacity building.