Latvia coverage

What the Latvia numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 82 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 24 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 Latvia 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 LMT and Tele2. 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 Latvia

• Tele2: Tele2 served 43 percent of private individuals' mobile voice and internet connections in 2023, the largest share in Latvia according to the regulator SPRK.
• LMT: Latvijas Mobilais Telefons served 34 percent of private individuals' mobile voice and internet connections in 2023, according to the regulator SPRK.
• Bite Latvija: Bite Latvija served 23 percent of private individuals' mobile voice and internet connections in 2023, the third of the country's three mobile networks.
• Market size: Latvia had 3.2 million active mobile connections at the end of 2023: 71 percent voice, 13 percent routers for laptops and tablets, and 16 percent machine to machine. LMT, Tele2, Bite and Tet together earned 81 percent of sector revenue.
• Network sharing: Tele2 builds its 5G network on its own because a planned network sharing deal with Bite Latvija did not win full approval from the regulator SPRK.

Older networks in Latvia

• LMT closed 3G in Kurzeme in autumn 2023, in Zemgale, Latgale and Vidzeme during 2024, and finished in Riga in March 2025. It has offered VoLTE calling on 4G since early 2021, and most of its voice traffic now runs that way.
• Tele2 switched off its last 3G base stations, more than 70 of them in Riga, Pardaugava and Marupe, on the night of 5 March 2025. Phones used only for calls keep working over 2G.
• On Tele2, a phone limited to 2G and 3G can still make calls and send texts over 2G, but it has no mobile data once 3G is gone. Mobile data needs a 4G or 5G phone.
• Bite Latvija scheduled its final 3G switch-off, in Riga, for the night of 17 to 18 March 2026, after closing 3G across Zemgale, Vidzeme, Kurzeme and Latgale during 2025. In Riga, 75 percent of its voice calls already ran over VoLTE.

5G in Latvia

• SPRK's December 2021 auction of 700 MHz spectrum raised 13.273 million euros. Tele2, LMT and Bite Latvija each won a base block for 20 years from 1 February 2022, and Tele2 and LMT bought extra blocks valid from 2025, all running to 31 January 2042.
• Under the government's 5G roadmap cited by SPRK, the 700 MHz licensees must keep extending their base blocks beyond the state cities along land transport roads, including the Via Baltica highway.
• LMT bought rights to 3750 to 3775 MHz for 20 years at an SPRK auction in 2023. It then had about 400 5G base stations serving more than 180 populated places across Latvia.
• Tele2 paid 4.65 million euros in total for its 700 MHz spectrum, which it pairs with 3.5 GHz rights won earlier. At the time of the December 2021 auction its 5G reached 15 towns.
• By March 2026, Bite Latvija's 5G network covered nearly 90 percent of the population. Its 900 MHz spectrum, freed from 3G, now strengthens 4G coverage along the main highways.

Network notes for Latvia

• Mobile users in Latvia consumed an average of 48 GB per connection each month in 2023, up 15 percent in a year and the highest figure among OECD countries, driven by unlimited data plans.
• Tele2 uses its 900 MHz spectrum for 2G and 4G voice and data and says the band is vital for service in sparsely populated areas. It held 1460 site permits in the band in August 2026, against a required 760.
• All three mobile operators hold 900 MHz spectrum of comparable width, and SPRK found the band almost fully used, with no one operator holding a concentration of it.