Business locales in San Jose may soon benefit from a city-enabled WiFi service.

From small coffee shops to upscale restaurants, San Jose’s store owners know just how important it is to provide their increasing number of mobile customers with the digital services that they love so much. Indeed, many local San José businesses already proudly display the ubiquitous “WiFi Hotspot” stickers on their front doors. According to many area companies, non-profit organizations, and public institutions, Costa Rica’s capital city is well on its way to becoming Central America’s first “digital city.”

The IX Latin American Meeting of Digital Cities began in San José this Monday, June 16, and will continue through Wednesday, June 18. Activities include a Microsoft presentation on a Platform of Service to Citizens, which will use technology to allow citizens and residents to sign up for information and city services easily.

“The idea is to unify the service window, Internet, and and cell phones with the aim of making citizen life easier,” Microsoft’s Latin American Public Sector manager, Rubén Bravo, said. The program will begin in San José, but if it is successful, it has the potential to spread to all local governments in Costa Rica.

In addition to Microsoft’s presentation, Motorola will explain how its services and equipment have helped other Latin American cities achieve widespread WiFi access. Motorola hopes that Costa Rica will be interested in such an overarching wireless plan.

“We’re talking about having WiFi not only in certain parks and restaurants, but in the entire metropolitan area,” Luis Canessa, a Motorola spokesman, said.  Canessa also notes that WiFi is more profitable than Wi-Max, a faster and more expensive network, because the city’s many wireless-ready laptop computers, cell phones, PDA’s, and cameras would have immediate access to a San José-enabled WiFi network.

In addition to such large technological advances, the country is also moving forward on the small scale. Recently, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE, the only company currently offering cellular service in Costa Rica) announced that in August, the famous Blackberry phone will officially become available. In addition, ICE says that they hope to distribute the iPhone 3G, the latest version of Apple’s famous phone, released just a week ago. Although illegally-hacked iPhones have been in the country for several months now, ICE has requested official permission to distribute the cell phone legally, and will await Apple’s response.

In further digital news, ICE is continuing to plan for the future with more innovative ideas, beginning with cellular plans that will, finally, include a cell phone. In order to be competitive in an open market, ICE will begin subsidizing the cost of the latest, hottest phones, similar to most USA-based cell phone companies. The new plans will be offered beginning in 2009.

San José is in the unique and enviable position to become Central America’s first digital city, and with it, Costa Rica is also working hard to become a more technologically advanced country, with all the tech goodies of its more developed siblings. With plans already in place, and others on the drawing board, it appears that the country and its capital will soon achieve their goals.

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Filed under: Technology on June 17th, 2008