Buy a Colombia eSIM Online

Mobile internet, 4G and 5G in Colombia

Colombia has four mobile brands: Claro, Movistar, Tigo and WOM. All four secured frequencies at the 5G auction on 21 December 2023 — Claro 80 MHz at 3.5 GHz plus a block at 2.5 GHz, WOM 80 MHz at 3.5 GHz, and Tigo and Movistar 80 MHz together through their joint venture. Spectrum in the 700 MHz, 1.9 GHz and AWS bands went unsold.

The rollout then moved quickly. Nokia and Claro completed the first phase in June 2024, four months after the licences were issued: 5G in six of Colombia's largest cities, over a thousand sites, a follow-on contract for another 400 5G sites, and a plan to add fourteen more cities during 2024. The source does not name those six cities, so we do not either. Nobody publishes a national coverage percentage in a form we could retrieve, so outside the big cities plan for 4G.

Roaming in Colombia without an eSIM

Colombia is outside the EU and the EEA, so 'Roam Like at Home' does not apply. That arrangement covers the EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, along with Moldova and Ukraine, and Colombia is not among them. Your Belgian or Dutch bundle therefore does not cross the border with you: your operator bills every megabyte at its own out-of-bundle roaming tariff, with none of the EU price caps that apply inside the zone. The European Commission itself advises checking that tariff with your provider before you travel.

Four brands, three radio networks: what that means for your connection

Colombia has four mobile brands but, since 2 January 2025, no longer four separate radio networks. Movistar and Tigo combined their access networks into a joint venture that runs for 22 years from the granting of the spectrum permit, while both companies continue to compete commercially. The combination takes 3G sites from 5,000 to 8,000 and 4G sites from 6,000 to over 10,000, serving more than 35 million mobile users shared between the two brands.

For a traveller that is good news with a caveat. Good news, because more towers under one network generally means more places where your phone finds something. The caveat: the name that appears on your screen does not automatically tell you which radio network you are on. So leave your phone to pick automatically rather than locking it to one network, and let it take whatever signal is strongest where you are.