Montenegro coverage

What the Montenegro 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 Montenegro 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 Telekom and One. 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 Montenegro

• Mtel: Mtel was Montenegro's largest mobile operator at the end of June 2026, with 621,783 users and 41.71 percent of the market, according to the regulator EKIP.
• Crnogorski Telekom: Crnogorski Telekom had 537,892 users at the end of June 2026, 36.08 percent of the market, according to EKIP's monthly report.
• One Crna Gora: One Crna Gora had 331,098 users at the end of June 2026, 22.21 percent of the market, according to EKIP's monthly report.
• Market size: Montenegro counted 1,490,773 mobile users at the end of June 2026, a penetration of 239 percent. Postpaid lines made up 60.07 percent and prepaid 39.93 percent.
• Summer peak: Tourism swells the market each summer. At the end of August 2025 EKIP counted 1,599,734 mobile users, a penetration of 256.52 percent, and prepaid lines had risen to 46.81 percent of the total.

Older networks in Montenegro

• Crnogorski Telekom officially shut down its 3G network on 22 January 2024 to put its spectrum and resources into 4G and 5G. It was also the first operator in Montenegro to offer VoLTE calling.

5G in Montenegro

• Crnogorski Telekom launched 5G commercially in March 2022 using dynamic spectrum sharing on its 2 GHz band, and One Crna Gora followed in July 2022 using its 1800 MHz, 2 GHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum.
• EKIP auctioned the 700 MHz, 3.6 GHz and 26 GHz bands from 20 to 27 December 2022. All paired 700 MHz and all 3.6 GHz blocks were sold with 15 year licences issued on 9 February 2023, while the 26 GHz band went unsold.
• Crnogorski Telekom and One switched on their first 3.6 GHz 5G base stations in Podgorica in March 2023, and Mtel followed in May. By the end of 2023, 3.6 GHz 5G reached urban Bar, Budva, Herceg Novi, Kotor, Niksic, Podgorica and Tivat.
• Crnogorski Telekom reported 5G coverage of 88.75 percent of the population from 230 sites in October 2024, citing EKIP's report, with 4G reaching 97.32 percent.

Network notes for Montenegro

• Existing operators holding 700 MHz spectrum must cover 97 percent of the population by the end of 2024 and 98 percent by the end of 2026 with at least 10 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up outdoors.
• The same licences require continuous coverage of every motorway and main road by the end of 2026, at least half of each regional road by then, and every regional road by the end of 2030.
• Because of heavy tourist traffic, data quality measured in July and August does not count toward checking whether operators meet their licence conditions, because tourists load the networks so heavily in those two months.
• In mid 2022, GSM reached 98 to 99 percent of the population and 3G and 4G 97 to 98 percent. GSM covered about 84 percent of the territory and 3G and 4G just over 80 percent, including main roads, tunnels and tourist centres.
• Each 700 MHz licensee must also bring coverage to at least five rural areas with no mobile signal by the end of 2026, chosen from a regulator list of rural settlements of at least 50 residents without usable mobile broadband.