Bolivia coverage

What the Bolivia 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 Bolivia 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 Entel and Tigo. 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 Bolivia

• Tigo (Telecel): Telecel was the largest employer among Bolivia's telecom operators at the end of 2024, with 1,903 permanent staff, and it launched more promotions than any other operator that year, 120 of the 335 recorded.
• Tigo (Telecel): Apple's carrier list shows Tigo supporting VoLTE, LTE, Personal Hotspot and FaceTime over cellular on iPhone in Bolivia. Entel and Viva do not appear on that list.
• Viva (Nuevatel): Nuevatel is the smallest of Bolivia's three mobile operators by staff, with 353 permanent employees at the end of 2024 against 1,903 at Telecel and 1,397 at Entel, and it launched 61 promotions that year.
• Entel: Entel launched 97 promotions in 2024. Its mobile customers averaged 15 minutes of voice calls a month in December 2024, against 8 for Nuevatel and 3 for Telecel, as calling moved to WhatsApp and other apps.

Older networks in Bolivia

• Bolivia still had just under one million GSM mobile lines without internet access at the end of 2024. The regulator expects them to be replaced gradually by 3G and 4G lines as cheaper smartphones spread.

5G in Bolivia

• Entel, the Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, had installed more than 100 5G base stations by October 2025 in the capital cities of all nine departments, and planned to reach 153 by December 2025 with an investment of 47.5 million dollars.
• Entel's initial 5G sites are concentrated in Santa Cruz with 26, La Paz with 24 and Cochabamba with 20, with 9 in Potosí, 6 each in Oruro and Chuquisaca, 5 in Tarija, 3 in Beni and 2 in Pando.
• Entel's 5G runs on band n78. To use it, a phone must support n78, be an Android handset or an iPhone on iOS 26, carry a 4G LTE SIM and be inside one of the enabled 5G zones.

Network notes for Bolivia

• At the end of 2024 Bolivia had 108 mobile lines per 100 inhabitants and 11.25 million lines on 3G or 4G LTE, yet almost 10 percent of lines still had no internet access.
• Oruro and Tarija have the highest mobile penetration, at 126 and 124 lines per 100 people, while Chuquisaca, Potosí and Beni sit between 72 and 89, which the regulator links to their large rural populations.
• La Paz and Santa Cruz each held just under 29 percent of Bolivia's mobile lines at the end of 2024, and together with Cochabamba the central axis accounted for 75 percent of all lines.
• Prepaid accounts for 90.9 percent of Bolivian mobile users, a share that has barely changed in recent years, and prepaid users can choose from a wide variety of mobile internet offers to match their own usage.
• Every Bolivian mobile operator must provide roaming support in rural areas, at least for voice. An operator without coverage in a rural area has to arrange roaming with one that has it, and users pay no more than their own operator's prepaid rate.