Algeria coverage

What the Algeria numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 27 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 6 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Algeria when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Djezzy and Ooredoo. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Algeria

• Mobilis: Mobilis, run by Algérie Télécom Mobile, had 23.48 million subscribers at the end of September 2025, a 41.97 percent share of Algeria's 55.94 million mobile subscriptions, according to the regulator ARPCE.
• Djezzy: Djezzy, run by Optimum Télécom Algérie, had 17.76 million subscribers at the end of September 2025, a 31.75 percent share of the mobile market.
• Djezzy: On 5 August 2022 VEON completed the sale of its entire 45.57 percent stake in Omnium Telecom Algérie, the owner of Djezzy, to the Algerian National Investment Fund, receiving about US$682 million.
• Ooredoo: Ooredoo, run by Wataniya Télécom Algérie, had 14.70 million subscribers at the end of September 2025, a 26.29 percent share, and the largest postpaid base of the three with 870,418 lines.

5G in Algeria

• ARPCE awarded 5G licences to the three mobile operators on 3 July 2025, with Mobilis ranked first in the tender, Ooredoo second and Djezzy third.
• The three 5G licences cost a combined 63.9 billion dinars, about US$492 million, and were published in the Official Journal after an executive decree before the ministry announced the start of 5G deployment in early December 2025.
• 5G rollout began in eight provinces designated as pilot areas, and under the national plan Mobilis, Djezzy and Ooredoo must reach full nationwide coverage within six years.
• In March 2026 Ooredoo said it had extended 5G to every wilaya, the first Algerian operator to do so, and that all of its 4G USIM cards work on 5G without a SIM change.

Network notes for Algeria

• Older networks still matter: at the end of September 2025, 4.12 percent of Algeria's mobile subscribers were on GSM and 6.32 percent on 3G, against 89.56 percent on 4G. Prepaid accounts for 95.75 percent of subscriptions.
• Djezzy has the most 4G-heavy base, with 93.31 percent of its subscribers on 4G at the end of September 2025, against 92.68 percent at Ooredoo and 84.76 percent at Mobilis, which still had 2.54 million 3G subscribers.
• The Medusa system, an 8,760 km Mediterranean cable with 24 fibre pairs and a design capacity of 480 Tbps, is designed to land in Algeria at Algiers and Collo. Its construction contract came into force in early July 2023.
• Mobile coverage can be patchy or absent in remote areas, particularly in the south of Algeria, and some online maps are inaccurate there.
• A cut to the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable at Annaba on 22 October 2015 cost Algérie Télécom 80 percent of its international bandwidth. It rerouted capacity over its second cable, between Algiers and Palma, and reserved most of it for business customers.
• When SEA-ME-WE 4 underwent scheduled maintenance in spring 2020, Algeria's other cables, Orval/Alval between Algiers, Oran and Valencia and Medex from Annaba, were unavailable, and the country fell back on the Hannibal link through Tunisia.
• Licensed operators pay 3 percent of annual turnover into a universal service fund, whose targets include telephone and internet access at a minimum of 2 Mbps in areas without coverage.