Chad eSIM
Data for Chad on Airtel Tchad and Moov Africa Tchad, from $14.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Airtel Tchad and Moov Africa Tchad
- 5G
- 4G only
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Chad
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $14.89 | $14.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $10.63 | $31.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $9.78 | $48.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $8.89 | $88.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the plan ends, and there is 100 MB of free rescue data on your account even at zero balance.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Chad on Airtel Tchad and Moov Africa Tchad. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Chad: 4G only. A well provisioned 4G cell comfortably outruns a congested 5G one, which is why the figure above is measured throughput rather than a network generation.
What data costs in Chad
A 500 MB plan for Chad starts at $2.81, which is $0.01 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in Chad it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.01.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Chad is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in Chad
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Chad and it attaches to Airtel Tchad. Median time from tapping install to having service across all Orbislo orders is 41 seconds.
On landing there is one thing to check and it is the thing that goes wrong about sixty percent of the time people tell us they have no service: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
Coverage across Chad
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
Getting a local SIM in Chad
SIM card registration against an identity document is compulsory in Chad under law 014/PR/2014 on eCommunications, read with order 040/MPTIC/10 on the identification of subscribers to telecommunications networks. Registration is carried out by the Chadian operator at the point of sale, so it catches a local SIM rather than a data-only eSIM you activate on a roaming agreement.
What is restricted in Chad
- VoIP: WhatsApp was blocked in Chad from 22 July 2020 on Airtel and Tigo, with the block hitting the service's frontend, backend and CDN servers. The communications minister called it a temporary measure against messages inciting hatred and division. Other data services kept working through the block.
- Social media: Access to WhatsApp and Facebook was severely restricted from 28 March 2018, at the start of a block on social networks that ran for about sixteen months. Reporters Without Borders described disruption of the internet as the standard response whenever there is political or social tension in Chad.
Worth knowing about Chad
- Article 56 of law 043/PR/2019 of 31 December 2019, the general state budget for 2020, requires mobile operators to identify all their subscribers from 1 January 2020, on penalty of a fine of 2,500 FCFA per month for every unidentified subscriber, with six months allowed to comply. CIPESA notes that the fine is payable by the operator rather than by the unregistered subscriber.
- Article 57 of the 2015 Cybercrime Act obliges operators of electronic communications services to keep connection and traffic data for a period of 10 years, and to install data traffic surveillance mechanisms in their networks.
- Article 114 of the 2014 eCommunications Act punishes anyone who fraudulently uses a public eCommunications network for personal purposes, or who fraudulently connects by any means to a private line, with one to five years imprisonment, a fine of 10 million to 200 million CFA, or both. CIPESA reads that article as criminalising the use of circumvention tools such as VPNs. The article text quoted in the report does not itself name VPNs, so treat it as a reported reading rather than settled law.
- Identification documents differ by status: a Chadian uses a national identity card, a passport or another document carrying an NNI, while a foreigner is asked for a residence card carrying an NNI. Visitors who hold neither cannot complete the standard identification for a local line.
- ARCEP gave Airtel and Moov Africa an ultimatum on 28 April 2025 to identify every subscriber by 5 May 2025, with compliance inspections from the following day and the threat of heavy financial and criminal penalties for operators that did not comply.
- ARCEP said operators were still selling pre-activated SIM cards without checking the National Identification Number, announced strict and systematic checks from 5 May, and its director general said security takes precedence over the economic side.
- Starlink was licensed in Chad on 13 March 2025 and ARCEP announced the service live from 4 July 2025, sold through resellers that ARCEP has approved rather than directly to anyone who imports a dish.
- An order from the telecommunications ministry, reported on 28 August 2025, requires every Starlink user in Chad, individual or corporate, to be registered with ARCEP or an approved operator, giving full identity, address and the serial numbers of the Starlink equipment. Connection records must be kept for at least 24 months.
- Breaches of the Starlink rules can bring suspension of up to twelve months, revocation of the licence, seizure of equipment, administrative fines and referral to the criminal courts, which is the exposure for anyone running an unregistered terminal.
- ARCEP lifted its measures against illegally held Starlink terminals on 4 July 2025 but kept import tightly held: only Starlink Tchad SARL may import the equipment, and only Starlink and ARCEP-approved internet access providers may sell the service.
- Bringing radio equipment or a satellite terminal into Chad runs through the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Public Security, which issues the import decision that ARCEP describes as the only legal document permitting import. VSAT files carry a study fee of 200,000 FCFA.
- Only an installer approved by ARCEP may install radios or VSAT stations in Chad, and operating a VSAT additionally needs a licence file, a signed cahier des charges setting the fees, and a ministerial order authorising installation and operation.
- National connectivity fell to around 60 percent of ordinary levels on the morning of 28 February 2021 across Airtel, Tigo and some fixed-line services, and had barely recovered a day later. Chad's outages tend to hit every network at once.
- Chad holds the regional record for a social media interruption of 472 days across 2018 and 2019, with a further targeted shutdown in February 2024. Mobile internet has also been off in Lac province since November 2024 after a Boko Haram attack and the counter-offensive that followed.
- Airtel Tchad launched eSIM on 13 July 2023, the first operator in the country to do so, and the profile is issued in an Airtel shop where staff check original identity documents and help scan the QR code.
- The sector rests on four laws of 2014 and 2015 published by the regulator, including law 014/PR/2014 on electronic communications and law 013/PR/2014 that created ARCEP, alongside laws on personal data protection and on cybersecurity.
How Chad compares across Africa
- Regional median
- 29.5 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Airtel Tchad, Moov Africa Tchad
- 5G
- No, LTE only
- Cities with their own page
- 3: N'Djamena, Moundou, Abéché
