Mauritius coverage

What the Mauritius numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 52 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 13 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 Mauritius 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 Emtel and my.t. 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 Mauritius

• my.t: Mauritius Telecom, which sells mobile service as my.t, is the largest operator with about 61 percent of the market at the end of June 2023, according to Omdia. Emtel had almost 22 percent and CHiLi, the mobile brand of Mahanagar Telephone Mauritius, 17 percent.
• my.t: Omdia estimated that at the end of June 2023 about 54 percent of my.t customers were still on 2G, 21 percent on 3G, almost 20 percent on 4G and about 5 percent on 5G. Emtel's base was split more evenly, with roughly a third each on 2G, 3G and 4G.
• Emtel: In August 2026 the regulator designated Emtel as universal service provider for Raphael Island in the St Brandon archipelago. Emtel will deliver 34 Mbps down and 12 Mbps up over a low Earth orbit satellite link for the coast guard, the weather service and the island's fishing company.

Older networks in Mauritius

• The government endorsed phasing out 3G on 3 October 2025. The operators have started decommissioning their 3G networks, each on its own schedule, and have confirmed that 3G service will end by 2028 at the latest.
• Devices that rely only on 3G, including some older phones, vehicle trackers and machine to machine equipment, stop working once the networks are decommissioned. The regulator has asked the public to stop importing and using 3G-only devices and to switch to 4G or 5G equipment.

5G in Mauritius

• On 17 June 2021 the regulator granted 5G spectrum licences to Cellplus, Emtel and MTML, one 100 MHz block each. Emtel received the block below 3 GHz, MTML the lower part of the 3.5 GHz band and Cellplus the upper part.
• There was no auction for 5G spectrum. Each operator named its preferred block and committed to timeframes for reaching set coverage percentages on mainland Mauritius and the outer islands, and the regulator awarded the blocks on those commitments.
• On 22 December 2025 the regulator opened the 700 MHz band, 2x30 MHz in the 703 to 788 MHz range, to the mobile operators for testing IMT networks, including 5G. Once tests succeed it will invite applications for network spectrum licences in the band.
• my.t launched 5G in mid-2021. Emtel followed in 2023, saying its network already covered 60 percent of the population and that it aimed to cover the whole island by 2024.

Network notes for Mauritius

• At the end of 2024 Mauritius had three mobile operators and 2,195,100 mobile subscriptions, or 176.4 per 100 inhabitants, and 99 percent of the population lived in areas covered by a mobile network.
• Mauritius was the first market in the African region to launch a mobile network, in 1989, and the first to offer 3G, in 2004, according to the chairman of the ICT Board.
• In April 2024 a disturbance on traffic through the SAFE submarine cable disrupted internet access in Mauritius, along with one bank's ATMs and card terminals, until late the same day. SAFE was then one of only two international cables landing on the island, alongside T3 to South Africa.
• Mauritius Telecom carries international traffic over the SAFE, LION and LION2, MARS and T3 cables, all with points of presence on the island, and buys partner capacity on routes including EIG, PEACE, SeaMeWe-5, WACS, SAT-3 and Equiano.
• Rodrigues has been connected to Mauritius since 16 February 2019 by the MARS submarine cable, more than 550 km long with a design capacity of 16 Tbps, built to give the island internet access comparable to the main island's.
• Since 11 May 2026 the regulator's KaliteNet app and website let users in Mauritius, Rodrigues and Agaléga test their connection, measuring speed, latency, signal strength and coverage, with anonymised results sent to the regulator.
• On 9 June 2026 the regulator met the mobile operators about weak coverage found in KaliteNet data, including the Salazie to Pont Bon Dieu road, which had been raised in Parliament. The operators cited delays in getting permits for new sites.