Mexico coverage

What the Mexico numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 44 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 10 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 Mexico 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 Telcel and AT&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 Mexico

• Telcel: Telcel, the América Móvil company Radiomóvil Dipsa, reported 83.3 million active mobile lines in March 2025 and took 39.8 percent of all telecom revenue reported in Mexico that quarter, the largest share of any company.
• AT&T Mexico: AT&T runs its Mexican mobile business through four licensed companies, which together reported 23.0 million active mobile lines in March 2025, second only to Telcel.
• Movistar: Movistar carries its mobile customers on AT&T's radio network under a capacity deal signed in 2019. Traffic began moving across in 2020, AT&T's 5G was added from 2022, and in 2024 the two companies extended the deal to 2030, each keeping control of its own transport and core networks.
• Altán Redes (Red Compartida): Altán Redes builds and runs the Red Compartida, a wholesale 4G LTE network on 90 MHz of the 700 MHz band. It sells nothing to the public; other brands resell its capacity, and it counted 17,961,116 active users on 30 June 2025.
• CFE: In January 2025 the regulator let the state power utility CFE take a 23 percent stake in Altán's trust rights without gaining control, on condition that CFE give up its own commercial wholesale concession and stop providing telecom services itself.

Older networks in Mexico

• Telcel was the only operator still reporting 2G coverage in early 2025, reaching 92.4 percent of the population and 44.8 percent of the territory, while Telefónica reported none. A phone that can only use 2G depends entirely on Telcel.
• 3G was still widely switched on in early 2025, covering 96.1 percent of the population on Telcel, 93.1 percent on AT&T and 83.1 percent on Telefónica, so an older 3G handset still finds voice service in most towns.
• A government table of towns covered by the shared network at the end of 2024 still lists 2G GSM, run only by Telcel, and notes that the technology, though it has coverage, now sees little demand and little use.

5G in Mexico

• On 9 February 2022 the regulator moved 18 Telcel concessions from 3,450 to 3,550 MHz down to 3,350 to 3,450 MHz and authorised mobile use where only fixed wireless access had been allowed, on condition that Telcel protect satellite services between 3,400 and 3,700 MHz.
• Telcel switched on its 5G network on 22 February 2022 in 18 cities home to more than 48 million people, with a goal of passing 120 cities with 5G coverage by the end of that year.
• In early 2025 5G reached 38.5 percent of Mexico's population on Telcel, 28.9 percent on AT&T and 23.0 percent on Telefónica, yet no network's 5G covered more than 1.0 percent of the country's land area. Outside the big cities, expect 4G.
• The regulator's 2026 frequency programme, approved on 26 December 2025, includes the 600 MHz band for wireless access, chosen for its long reach, which the regulator says will make 5G easier to roll out across the country.

Network notes for Mexico

• Operators reported 142.3 million active mobile lines in March 2025: Telcel 83.3 million, AT&T 23.0 million, Movistar 21.1 million and Walmart's Bait 8.4 million. Since 2025 a line counts as active only if it carried voice traffic in the previous 90 days.
• By the regulator's early 2025 figures, 4G reached 94.1 percent of Mexico's 126 million people on Telcel, 90.1 percent on AT&T, 89.4 percent on Altán's shared network and 83.2 percent on Telefónica.
• Population figures hide how much land has no signal. Telcel's 4G, the widest, covered 42.0 percent of Mexico's territory in early 2025, Altán's 24.8 percent and AT&T's 24.6 percent, so long stretches of road, desert and sierra between towns sit outside each network's 4G footprint.
• The shared network covered 82.83 percent of the population at the end of 2024. Its contract, amended in 2022, now requires 85 percent by 24 January 2027 and the 92.2 percent first promised for 2024 by 24 January 2028.
• When the shared network passed its 70 percent milestone in November 2022, it had reached 82,119 localities of under 250 inhabitants and 10,592 localities of 250 to 5,000, the small rural places it was designed to connect.
• At the end of 2024, 94 of the 111 Pueblos Mágicos on the tourism ministry list used in the shared network's contract had more than 85 percent of their population inside its coverage.
• Indigenous regions are a known gap. At the end of 2023, 86 percent of Mexico's indigenous population had mobile coverage in at least one technology, and 4G reached 78 percent of localities with an indigenous population.
• After Hurricane Otis hit Guerrero in October 2023, the regulator reported that restoring mobile service depended on getting power back and reaching damaged sites, and satellite links were set up in Acapulco and Chilpancingo in the meantime.
• The telecommunications law published on 16 July 2025 created the Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones under the Agencia de Transformación Digital y Telecomunicaciones. The old federal institute, IFT, kept working only until the new commission's board was formed.