Malawi coverage

networks available

Which network you get

Carrier	Role	5G
Airtel Malawi	Primary, used by default	yes, standalone
TNM	Failover, used when the primary degrades	yes, standalone

You do not choose between them. If the network you are on gets congested we move you to the other one automatically, in the middle of your trip, and tell you afterwards.

A single carrier provider cannot make this move.

How we measure

Orbislo devices report connection quality on real traffic, never synthetic speed tests, because a speed test spends your data to tell us something we can measure for free. Reports carry the carrier, the radio type, the throughput and a coarse location of roughly one kilometre. No precise location is ever collected, nothing is published below a sample of 25, and you can switch the whole thing off in one tap.

Measured from real sessions, never from a speed test we ran ourselves.

What happens in Malawi 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 Airtel Malawi and TNM. 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.

Questions about Malawi

Which network will I be on in Malawi?

Airtel Malawi or TNM. Orbislo moves you to whichever is performing better where you are standing, without asking you and without you noticing.

What if I get no signal at all in Malawi?

Open the app and use your free rescue data: 100 MB a month, on every account, in over 200 countries, and it works at a zero balance. It exists for exactly this moment, because needing data in order to buy data is not a situation anybody should be put in. If that cannot find a network either, message us from the app and we will sort it.

Will my phone work in Malawi?

If it supports eSIM and is not carrier locked, yes. We check your exact model before you pay and tell you plainly if it will not work, rather than taking the money and leaving you to find out on arrival.

Coverage nearby

Malawi plans from $2.84 Africa regional plan Compare every country

How Malawi compares across Africa

Regional median: 29.5 Mbps
Upstream networks: 2, Airtel Malawi, TNM
5G: Yes, in Lilongwe, Blantyre and eight other cities
Cities with their own page: 3: Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzuzu

Cities with their own page

Blantyre: Chileka International Airport, nearest airport BLZ, 13 km from Blantyre
Lilongwe: Kamuzu International Airport, nearest airport LLW, 20 km from Lilongwe
Mzuzu