Bogota eSIM
In Bogota you connect to Claro or Movistar, whichever is performing better where you are standing. The typical speed across the country is 38 Mbps. Your data starts working the moment you land, before you reach the immigration hall.
- Networks
- Claro and Movistar
- Typical speed in Colombia
- 38 Mbps typical, 9 Mbps at busy times
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans that cover Bogota
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $9.89 | $9.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $6.30 | $18.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $6.38 | $31.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $5.19 | $51.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $4.59 | $91.89 |
How Colombia compares across South America
- Regional typical speed
- 33.5 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Claro, Movistar
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Uruguay, 48 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Peru, 35 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 3: Bogota, Cartagena, Medellin
Landing at El Dorado International Airport (BOG)
- Airport
- BOG / SKBO
- Distance
- 12 km from the centre of Bogota
Getting into Bogota
- TransMilenio route M86 Aeropuerto on the Calle 26 corridor to Portal Eldorado (BOG)
Worth knowing about Bogota
- Bogota has no metro at all: Line 1 is still under construction, with the mayor's office pointing to March 2028, so every airport transfer is by road.
- When Bogota's metro does open it will be elevated rather than in tunnel, a design the builders kept to avoid cost and delay.
- El Dorado sits at 2,548 m elevation, one of the highest major international airports in the Americas.
- The airport lies inside the city boundary, mostly in the Fontibon district, rather than in a separate satellite town.
- Bogota runs a free public wifi network called WIFI Bogota. You pick the network, fill in your details on a captive portal, answer validation questions and accept the conditions, then get an hour of browsing.
- The Red Conectate Bogota arm of that network has 21 access points spread across 15 localities, and its capacity was raised to 100 Mbit/s in November 2024.
- The city counts more than 280 free wifi zones in all, including 53 TransMilenio stations, 119 intelligent SITP bus stops, 26 parks and plazas, 23 SuperCADE offices and 18 district market halls.
- Session length depends on where you stand: 10 minutes at a TransMilenio station or SITP stop, 45 minutes in a park and repeatable, and an hour at a SuperCADE.
- The network names you will actually see include WiFi Gratis TransMilenio, Transmi te conecta, WiFi Gratis Para La Gente and WiFi Bogota, so there is no single SSID to look for.
- TransMilenio takes no cash at the turnstile. To board any SITP service you must first buy or top up a tullave stored value card, which costs 8,000 Colombian pesos.
- The single fare on TransMilenio, TransMiZonal and TransMiCable is 3,550 Colombian pesos all day, charged when you validate at the turnstile.
- Free transfers need a personalised tullave card. An unpersonalised basic card pays the full fare on every trip, which catches out visitors who buy the quick anonymous version.
- The transfer window is 125 minutes, two hours and five minutes, from the moment you validate, and allows two transfers between zonal and trunk services but not between two trunk services.
- Personalising a tullave card means going to a personalisation point with your identity document, and one person may hold only one personalised card at a time.
- El Dorado airport has staff on hand for arriving travellers plus a point where you can personalise and top up a tullave card, so you can be paying fares before you leave the terminal.
- Colombia has tied handsets to identity documents since October 2012, when MinTIC required every line to sit in a positive database against a cedula and an IMEI, with unregistered pairings blocked after 15 days.