Ericsson lands deal to deploy 5G SA for Liberty Costa Rica

Details: John Tanner; Category: Wireless Networks; 16 July 2025; 7115 views

Ericsson said on Tuesday it has signed a six-year strategic contract with Liberty Latin America to deploy 5G Standalone (5G SA) technology for Liberty Costa Rica.

Under the contract, Liberty Costa Rica will deploy Ericsson’s cloud-native, dual-mode 5G Core solution, along with over 1,400 sites covering more than 3.7 million subscribers across the entire national territory.

For the mobile RAN sites, Liberty Costa Rica will deploy Ericsson’s Massive MIMO TDD radio AIR 3255, millimeter-wave AIR 5322, and single-band Radio 4432, operating in the 700-MHz, 3500-MHz, and 26-GHz frequency bands. The scope of the contract also includes baseband (RAN Processor 6655 with built-in AI), antennas supported by RAN site enclosures, and batteries.

No financial details were dislosed.

Ericsson said the 5G SA network will improves the mobile broadband experience for Liberty Costa Rica’s consumer and business customers with faster speeds, lower latency, and more reliable connections for both mobile and fixed wireless access (FWA) services. It will also be designed to scale quickly to support expected growth of demand for IoT connectivity.

Guillermo Ponce, senior VP for Central and South America at Liberty Latin America, said the deployment marks the group’s first 5G SA network, which he said “will change the way people navigate and boost economic growth thanks to the development of new technological solutions in different industries", including healthcare, agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, and ports.

Sean Cryan, head of LATAM North and Caribbean at Ericsson, said 5G SA enables differentiated connectivity for those industries via scaling solutions such as AI, network slicing, and APIs for new use cases and services.

“The deployment of the 5G SA network in Costa Rica marks a significant step forward, enabling enhanced user experiences and driving economic growth and innovation,” he said in a statement.

Liberty Costa Rica spent US$16.2 million for 5G spectrum blocks in the 700-MHz, 2300-MHz, 3500-MHz and 26/28-GHz bands at the start of this year.

Liberty Latin America entered the Costa Rican market in July 2020 via a US$505 million deal to buy out Telefonica Costa Rica. The deal was completed over a year later in August 2021. Three years later in August 2024, Liberty Costa Rica struck a deal to merge with Millicom International Cellular’s Tigo Costa Rica via an all-stock deal.

The Liberty Costa Rica/Ericsson deal marks the second 5G SA deployment planned for Costa Rica. In October last year, Nokia said it had partnered with RACSA (Radiográfica Costarricense SA) to deploy the first one in urban centres including San Jose, Cartago, and Limon, as well as rural communities across the country.