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Mobile internet, 4G and 5G in the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville)

Two operators run the mobile market in the Republic of the Congo — not to be confused with its larger neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo — MTN Congo and Airtel Congo. The regulator, ARPCE (Agence de Régulation des Postes et des Communications Électroniques), states in its own quarterly market report that between them the two operators hold the entire market, with MTN at roughly two-thirds (64.8% as of the second quarter of 2025) and Airtel at around a third (35.2%). ARPCE describes operator presence as extending across the whole national territory — a characterisation of reach, not a published coverage percentage, and the regulator's quarterly reports don't contain a population or geographic 4G or 5G coverage figure either.

MTN Congo commercially launched 5G on 21 November 2024, inaugurated by President Denis Sassou Nguesso after a pilot running since October 2022 — MTN's sixth commercial 5G launch on the continent, and reported as the first 5G deployment in Central Africa. No Airtel Congo 5G launch has been confirmed.

Roaming in the Republic of the Congo without an eSIM

The Republic of the Congo 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 — the Republic of the Congo is not among them. Your Belgian or Dutch bundle therefore stays behind: your operator bills every megabyte at its own out-of-bundle roaming tariff, without the EU price caps. Check that tariff with your provider before you go.

What regulator ARPCE's own checks found

The clearest picture of what to expect on the ground in the Republic of the Congo comes not from a coverage percentage but from ARPCE's own enforcement work. A drive test the regulator ran across 20 localities between 6 and 23 February 2026 found 4G reach uneven between the two operators — MTN had extended 4G to 11 of the tested localities, Airtel to fewer — and rated both operators' ageing 2G networks as mediocre on quality. In the north, Airtel's 3G score dropped sharply, which the operator attributed to repeated fibre-optic cuts on the national backbone network during the test period. ARPCE gave both operators six months to close the gaps. One genuinely reassuring finding from the same test: national roaming between MTN and Airtel was confirmed working on the country's two main trunk roads, RN1 and RN2.

SIM registration is required by law at the point of purchase (Article 130 of Law n°9-2009, detailed in Décret n°554 of 2010), but ARPCE's own most recent compliance survey — 18 localities checked between July and August 2025 — found cards still being sold without identity documents, sometimes already activated. Only two of the eighteen localities checked were fully compliant, and the share of properly identified SIM cards fell to 9.13%, down from 13.20% the year before. No official source sets out a separate procedure for a foreign visitor buying a SIM, so what exactly to bring isn't published. An eSIM that's already registered and active before departure avoids that gap entirely.