Egypt coverage

What the Egypt numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 29 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 Egypt 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 Vodafone and Orange. 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 Egypt

• Vodafone Egypt: Under the 2026 to 2030 spectrum roadmap, Vodafone Egypt is being assigned 20 MHz in the 1800 MHz band and 100 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band in phases, with the assignments running until 2039.
• e& Egypt: e& Egypt is being assigned 20 MHz in the 1800 MHz band and 100 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band between 2026 and 2030, valid until 2039.
• Orange Egypt: Orange Egypt is being assigned 10 MHz in the 2600 MHz band and 100 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band between 2026 and 2030, valid until 2039.
• Telecom Egypt (WE): Telecom Egypt, which sells mobile service as WE, is being assigned 50 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band under the roadmap, half the 3.5 GHz allocation of each of the other three operators.

5G in Egypt

• The regulator NTRA launched 5G on 4 June 2025 across all four operators. Telecom Egypt received its 5G licence in January 2024, and Vodafone Egypt, Orange Egypt and e& Egypt received theirs in October 2024.
• The 2026 to 2030 roadmap adds 410 MHz of spectrum: 40 MHz at 1800 MHz, 20 MHz at 2600 MHz and 350 MHz at 3.5 GHz, the core 5G band. It doubles all spectrum given to mobile since service began in Egypt.
• Egypt first used TDD mobile technology when 130 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum was awarded in 2020 and 2022, a band since extended to 2039. Early 5G trials ran at 3.5 GHz in the New Administrative Capital.

Network notes for Egypt

• Egypt had 126.12 million mobile subscriptions in April 2026, a penetration rate of 112.88 percent, up 8.54 percent on a year earlier, according to the communications ministry and NTRA.
• Since January 2025 all four operators offer Wi-Fi Calling, which carries ordinary mobile calls over Wi-Fi at the same plan prices with no extra charge. It is aimed at high rise buildings and other indoor spots with weak signal, and is switched on in the phone's settings.
• More than 3,000 mobile towers were built in 2024 under a national coverage plan, and the ministry set mid 2025 as the target for full coverage of all major highways and all villages in the Hayat Karima programme.
• NTRA imposes double penalties on operators that fail to meet quality standards, as part of its rules to improve coverage and service performance.
• NTRA runs its own monthly field tests of all four networks in Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, the Delta, the Canal area, the Red Sea and Upper Egypt, including main roads, measuring blocked and dropped calls, speech quality, data speeds and video streaming.