Eswatini Communications - 2024

Telephones - fixed lines

total subscriptions: 37,746 (2022 est.)

subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 4 (2021 est.)

Telephones - mobile cellular

total subscriptions: 1.4 million (2021 est.)

subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 120 (2021 est.)

Telecommunication systems

general assessment: Eswatini was one of the last countries in the world to open up its telecom market to competition; until 2011 the state-owned Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications also acted as the industry regulator and had a stake in the country’s sole mobile network; a new independent regulatory authority was established in late 2013 and has since embarked on significant changes to the sector; mobile market subscriptions have been affected by the common use among subscribers when they use SIM cards from different networks in order to access cheaper on-net calls; subscriber growth has slowed in recent years, but was expected to have reached 8% in 2021, as people adapted to the changing needs for connectivity caused by the pandemic; the internet sector has been open to competition with a small number of licensed ISPs; DSL services were introduced in 2008, development of the sector has been hampered by the limited fixed-line infrastructure and by a lack of competition in the access and backbone networks; Eswatini is landlocked and so depends on neighboring countries for international bandwidth; this has meant that access pricing is relatively high, and market subscriptions remains relatively low; prices have fallen recently in line with greater bandwidth availability resulting from several new submarine cable systems which have reached the region in recent years; in September 2020 a terrestrial cable linked Mozambique with Eswatini and South Africa (2022)

domestic: fixed-line stands at nearly 4 per 100 and mobile-cellular teledensity roughly 120 telephones per 100 persons (2021)

international: country code - 268; satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean)

Broadcast media

1 state-owned TV station; satellite dishes are able to access South African providers; state-owned radio network with 3 channels; 1 private radio station (2019)

Internet country code

.sz

Internet users

total: 708,000 (2021 est.)

percent of population: 59% (2021 est.)

Broadband - fixed subscriptions

total: 12,000 (2020 est.)

subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 1 (2020 est.)