Using the Multi Pagos Public Telephones When you had just gotten to know how to use one or more of the various public telephones, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) - the state telecom monopoly - comes out with a new public telephone. The "multi pagos", telephones that take different payment methods, has replaced all the public telephones around the country,  public telephones that some took only coins - the silver ones, others that only accepted payment a special card with a "chip", and others that could only be used by a 197 calling card. The new public telephones went into service last November and since ICE has been busy since replacing all the old public telephones with the new public telephones. Aside from a small metal plate on the face of the public telephone and an initial media campaign to explain the use of the public telephones, users of the public telephones are left standing, scratching their head for a while the first time the use them. For foreigners, especially visitors to Costa Rica, the new telephones can be . The only place were we have been able to find detailed instructions, in both Spanish and English, has been at the international airport in San José. In addition to instructions on using the public telephone, ICE has included numbers to call for such things as local collect calls (110), telephone directory (113), international calls operator (116), sending telegrams and fax by phone (123) and international information service (124). However, except for 116 and 124 services, none of the operators speak English. The instructions also include the prefix for dialing an international call, though it is not clear on the differentiating calls made to North America and those to the rest of the world. Calls to North America (United States and Canada) has the prefix 001 (not 011 as commonly mistaken by American and Canadian visitors). North America has as the country code is 1, while the country code for Italy is 39 So if you wanted to call New York for instance you would dial 00 1 212 xxx xxxx, while a call to Rome Italy would be 00 39 06 xxx xxxx. For calls to Central America you would dial 00 + area code + number, while to South America it would be 00 + country code + city code + number. If you wanted to call Nicaragua you would dial 00 505 xxx xxxx, while a call to Bogotá, Colombia, for instance, would be dialed as 00 57 1 xxx xxxx. A detailed list of country codes dialed from Costa Rica can be found here. The new public telephones accept only the gold coins in denominations of ¢10, ¢25 and ¢50 and will not accept any of the silver coins still in circulation nor the ¢100 or ¢500 gold coins. Calls cal also be made using the "chip" cards or the prepaid 197 and 199 calling cards. Once the payment option if inserted, the next step is to dial the number. If you followed the first instruction to listen for a dial tone, the call will be connected.

For a full size image of the above instructions click here.