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Where to Find WiFi in Panama

March 23, 2009 at 11:54 AM | by | Comments (2)

Our own Brendan Spiegel is down in Panama this week and will be reporting back on all that he's seen and done. Whether or not he's wearing a Panama Hat, we can't say. But if you have any questions or suggestions for him, let us know.

Jaunted is checking out the wild shores of Panama this week, and as you might expect, our first question upon arriving is, where can we find some WiFi?

The answer, quite surprisingly, is just about everywhere. Cosmopolitan Panama City is a telecommunications hub, with tech businesses like Dell, MCI and Swisscom basing much of their Latin American operations here, creating a mini-Silicon Valley along the isthmus. Consequentially, the Internet infrastructure across the country is years ahead of the rest of Central America.

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Tocumen International Airport (PTY) sets the pace with free (!) WiFi throughout most of the international terminal and the signal is pretty good, too. And while most touristy places throughout the country have Internet cafes, you won't need them if you're traveling with a laptop, since WiFi seems to be everywhere.

Panama City is covered in wireless hotspots, and even in more distant locales, like the backpacker beaches of the Bocas Del Toro archipelago, which we're exploring this week, we never seem too far from a signal.

This weekend we took a hike through the jungle on a tiny Caribbean isle called Bastimentos—no cars, few shops, fewer tourists—but halfway through we stopped for lunch at the only open eatery in town and hopped on their WiFi network.

Of course, if you're going somewhere really remote, you'll be out of signal range (we didn’t pick up anything in the largely undeveloped Kuna Yala province last week.) But in the more developed part of the country, you can often have better luck finding an unlocked wireless network than in Manhattan.

Related Stories:
· Panama travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Airport WiFi Map [Jaunted]
· Central America and Caribbean travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: ekai]



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Update

I am not wearing a Panama hat. But I should have. Very sunburned. Seriously, wear a hat. It's worth it.

good to know!

You just calmed my "what if I can't log in to my office" panic attack.