Mongolia eSIM
Data for Mongolia on Mobicom and Unitel, from $12.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and refills land on the line you already have, with nothing new to install.
- Networks
- Mobicom and Unitel
- Typical speed
- 35 Mbps typical, 8 Mbps at busy times
- 5G
- 4G only
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Mongolia
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $12.89 | $12.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $8.63 | $25.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $7.58 | $37.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $6.39 | $63.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the line closes, and customers get at least 100 MB of free rescue data a month even at zero balance.
What 35 Mbps actually means in Mongolia
Typical download speed on Orbislo in Mongolia: 35 Mbps. That is below the Asia median of 43.9 Mbps, so plan around it rather than being surprised by it.
The tenth percentile is 8 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.
Maps, messaging, ride hailing and payment apps all work without complaint. Video calls connect but will drop resolution, and streaming is better set to standard definition than left on automatic. Tethering a laptop works for email and documents rather than for calls.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Mongolia on Mobicom and Unitel. 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 Mongolia: 4G only. A well provisioned 4G cell comfortably outruns a congested 5G one, which is why the figure above is throughput rather than a network generation.
What data costs in Mongolia
A 1 GB plan for Mongolia starts at $12.89, which is $12.89 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 Mongolia it means the effective cost is nearer $9.28 a gigabyte than $12.89.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Mongolia 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 Mongolia
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 Mongolia and it attaches to Mobicom.
On landing there is one thing to check: 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 Mongolia
A voice line is registered to a named person. The rules oblige the operator to record the family name and given name together with a civil registration number and to confirm the identity using an authentication method the law allows, and a customer collecting service at a branch is asked to verify again against their documents.
What is restricted in Mongolia
- Blocked websites: The regulator does not police content itself, but on a decision from a court, the police, the intellectual property office or the competition authority it restricts access from Mongolia to a domain by adding it to a blacklist, and lifts it once the breach is fixed.
Worth knowing about Mongolia
- The registered number doubles as an identity check for banking and government services here, which is why the regulator describes a second verification at the counter as a fraud measure rather than paperwork.
- Communications equipment sold and used in the country has to carry the regulator's certification that it meets the technical and safety requirements, and the register of certified equipment is published.
- Emergency numbers are 101 for fire, 102 for police including traffic police, and 103 for an ambulance. From a phone on a foreign number, the police line is +976 102, and an English speaker should be available.
- Signal ends quickly outside the towns. Large areas of rural Mongolia have no network coverage, and British travel advice tells drivers heading out of the cities to carry a backup such as a satellite phone and to share their route.
- If mobile internet falls short of the speed a contract promises, the complaint goes first to the operator, which must have a procedure for handling it, and then to the regulator if the operator does not resolve it.
How Mongolia compares across Asia
- Regional typical speed
- 42.95 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Mobicom, Unitel
- 5G
- 4G only
- Next fastest nearby
- Uzbekistan, 37 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Philippines, 34 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 1: Ulaanbaatar
