Mauritius eSIM
Data for Mauritius on Emtel and my.t, from $10.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Emtel and my.t
- Real speed
- 52 Mbps median, 13 Mbps for the slowest tenth196 travellers, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Mauritius
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $10.89 | $10.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $7.30 | $21.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $6.38 | $31.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $4.89 | $48.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $4.69 | $93.89 |
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.
What 52 Mbps actually means in Mauritius
Travellers on Orbislo in Mauritius see a median download of 52 Mbps, measured across 196 real sessions rather than a speed test we ran ourselves. That puts Mauritius well above the Africa median of 30 Mbps, and 66th out of the 159 destinations we have measured.
The tenth percentile is 13 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
That is enough for everything most travellers do: maps, messaging, video calls, streaming at high definition, and tethering a laptop for ordinary work. It is not enough to be casual about uploading a day of raw photographs.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Mauritius on Emtel and my.t. 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 Mauritius: yes, non standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
What data costs in Mauritius
A 500 MB plan for Mauritius starts at $1.28, which is $0.00 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 Mauritius it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Mauritius 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 Mauritius
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 Mauritius and it attaches to Emtel. 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.
Getting a local SIM in Mauritius
A visitor buying a local SIM is registered at the counter under the Registration of SIM Regulations 2023. The operator takes the passport or another valid travel document, an address in the country, and a colour photograph checked against the document in real time. No registration happens without the photograph.
What is restricted in Mauritius
- Social media suspension, 2024: On 1 November 2024 the ICT Authority announced that, on government directives received the evening before, it had instructed every internet provider to suspend access to all social media platforms until 11 November 2024, citing illegal postings that threatened national security and public safety.
- Suspension lifted: The social media suspension was lifted on 2 November 2024, after little more than a day. While it lasted, sites such as X, Facebook and YouTube could not be reached from Mauritius, although messaging apps reportedly kept working.
- Harmful messages offence: Section 46(ga) of the ICT Act 2001 makes it an offence to send or post an obscene, offensive, threatening, false or misleading message likely to cause harm. In February 2026 the regulator reminded the public that conviction can bring up to 10 years' penal servitude and a fine of up to one million rupees.
- Child abuse content filter: All internet traffic entering Mauritius is filtered for child sexual abuse material, using blocklists from the Internet Watch Foundation and Interpol that cannot be edited locally. Anyone who requests a blocked address sees an ICTA block page instead of the site.
Worth knowing about Mauritius
- Registration is done by the operator at the moment of sale rather than afterwards, and it applies to everyone buying a SIM, tourists included.
- Giving false or misleading information to register a SIM is an offence carrying a fine of up to 50,000 rupees and up to a year in prison, which is why counters here are strict about the paperwork.
- Dial 999 for any emergency service, or 112 for the police, 114 for an ambulance and 115 for the fire service. The tourist police can also be reached on 999 or 112.
- Every mobile number in the Republic of Mauritius, including Rodrigues, Agaléga and Saint Brandon, has eight digits and starts with 5, a format in force since 1 September 2013. Emergency numbers did not change.
- Hotels and other holders of a Tourist Enterprise Licence or Tourist Accommodation Certificate may buy SIM cards to hand to guests, but each card is activated only once the tourist's passport details, a local address and a photograph checked against the passport have been recorded.
- Satellite broadband through fixed terminals, including low Earth orbit services, may only be sold in Mauritius through a licensed local internet provider that keeps ownership of the terminal, and operating a terminal requires an earth station licence from the regulator.
- Mauritius has signed the ITU's GMPCS memorandum on satellite phones, so ITU-registered handheld satellite services generally need no individual licence to serve the country, although satellite handsets registered in Mauritius need an engineering licence.
- Everyone already holding a Mauritian SIM had to re-register it with the operator between 31 October 2023 and 30 April 2024 to avoid deactivation, and a SIM held with each operator had to be re-registered separately.
How Mauritius compares across Africa
- Speed rank
- 2 of 24 destinations we have measured in Africa
- Regional median
- 29.5 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 25 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 2, Emtel, my.t
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Réunion, 63.1 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- South Africa, 42 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 1: Port Louis
- tenth percentile
- 13 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 196 travellers, rolling 90 days
