Suisse : la couverture mobile

Ce que veulent dire les chiffres de Suisse

Deux nombres comptent et un seul est celui que tout le monde cite. Le débit habituel, 112 Mbit/s, dit à quoi ressemble un bon moment.

Le dixième centile, 39 Mbit/s, c'est celui qu'il faut lire. C'est le débit du dixième le plus mauvais de la journée, quand l'antenne au-dessus de la gare est saturée et que tout le monde autour de vous est dessus. Un pays à médiane haute et à plancher bas, c'est un pays qui marche à merveille jusqu'au moment où vous en avez vraiment besoin.

Si le voyage dépend des appels vidéo ou du partage de connexion, organise toi en fonction du chiffre en heure chargée plutôt que du débit habituel.

Ce qui se passe en Suisse quand le réseau est saturé

La congestion n'est pas une panne, c'est un mardi soir. La question est ce que votre eSIM peut y faire, et pour la plupart des eSIM de voyage la réponse est rien : un accord de gros par pays, un réseau, et aucune issue sauf acheter une deuxième eSIM chez quelqu'un d'autre, debout dans la rue.

Ici le trafic Orbislo passe par Swisscom et Salt. Quand le réseau où vous êtes se dégrade, nous vous basculons sur un autre, en plein voyage, sans que vous demandiez, et nous vous le disons après plutôt que de vous interrompre sur le moment.

Les opérateurs mobiles en Suisse

• Swisscom: Swisscom had 6,438,000 mobile customers in Switzerland at the end of 2025, up 107,000 in a year after gaining 185,000 contract customers and losing 78,000 prepaid ones. It held about 53.1 percent of all mobile customers at the end of 2024.
• Swisscom: In the 2019 auction Swisscom won the largest holdings in both main 5G bands, 30 MHz of 700 MHz FDD spectrum and 120 MHz of the 3.5 GHz band, and paid CHF 195,554,002.
• Sunrise: Sunrise ended 2025 with 3,159,000 mobile customers, up 0.9 percent, and held 23.6 percent of the market at the end of 2024. About 90 percent of its customers are on contracts, the highest share of the three networks.
• Sunrise: Sunrise took 100 MHz of the 3.5 GHz band and 10 MHz of 700 MHz FDD spectrum in the 2019 auction for CHF 89,238,101, the smallest bill of the three operators.
• Sunrise: In the 2012 auction, which reassigned all existing and upcoming mobile spectrum, Sunrise paid CHF 481,720,000, more than Swisscom's CHF 359,846,000 and Orange's CHF 154,702,000, out of CHF 996,268,000 in total.
• Salt: Salt grew fastest of the three networks in 2025, by 6.3 percent to 2,254,000 mobile customers, adding about 110,000 contracts and 24,000 prepaid customers. It held 17.7 percent of the market at the end of 2024.
• Salt: Salt paid CHF 94,500,625 in the 2019 auction for 20 MHz of 700 MHz FDD spectrum and 80 MHz of the 3.5 GHz band.

Les anciens réseaux en Suisse

• Swiss operators switched off their 2G networks between 2019 and 2023. Sunrise shut its 3G network in mid 2025 and Swisscom at the end of 2025, while Salt had set no date but was expected to keep 3G running until the end of 2026.
• Swisscom began phasing out 3G at the end of 2025 and set the final shutdown for 7 April 2026. It warns that 4G phones which still use 3G for calls stop working, and that a phone whose 4G symbol disappears during a call is not using VoLTE.
• Phones without 4G can no longer be used in Switzerland. Phones that use 4G for data but need 2G or 3G for calls, because they lack VoLTE, lose voice calling, and on some handsets VoLTE has to be switched on by hand in the settings.

La 5G en Suisse

• Swisscom switched on the first 5G network in Switzerland at midnight on 17 April 2019, at 102 sites in 54 towns including Basel, Bern, Chur, Davos, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich.
• The 5G spectrum auction ran from 29 January to 7 February 2019 and sold 700 MHz, 1400 MHz and 3.5 GHz frequencies for CHF 379,292,728, on licences lasting 15 years. A fourth bidder, Dense Air, took part but won no spectrum.
• The 2019 licences required any holder of 700 MHz FDD spectrum to cover at least 50 percent of the Swiss population with its own infrastructure by 31 December 2024, and other holders 25 percent. A licensee that missed the target could have its rights withdrawn without compensation.
• By the end of 2025 Swisscom reached 99 percent of the population with 5G and 88 percent with its faster 5G+ layer. Sunrise covered over 99 percent with 5G, basic and standalone, and 79 percent with its 5G broadband layer.
• 5G reached 95 percent of Switzerland's land area at the end of 2024, up from 74 percent in 2021. 4G covered 98 percent of the land area and, in the regulator's rounded figures, 100 percent of the population.
• Sunrise 5G standalone needs a subscription enabled for it and a certified device, and on Apple devices also a SIM or eSIM with SUCI support. Access depends on manufacturers certifying handsets and releasing firmware updates.

Le réseau en Suisse : à savoir

• The licences won in 2012 for the 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2600 MHz bands, a good half of all mobile spectrum in use, expire at the end of 2028. The tender opened on 1 September 2026, with the auction expected in the second quarter of 2027.
• Switzerland counted 11,919,398 mobile subscriptions at the end of 2024, or 131.7 per 100 residents. Only 15.5 percent were prepaid, down from 21 percent in 2021.
• Among prepaid customers the order changes: at the end of 2024 Swisscom held 47.3 percent, Salt 20.4 percent and Sunrise 17.7 percent, while smaller providers together held 14.6 percent, up from 6.5 percent in 2019.
• Mobile data traffic in Switzerland reached 2.36 billion gigabytes in 2024, 12.7 percent more than in 2023.