East Timor
Power & telecom standards in East Timor
Connectivity Overview
Tempest Telecom offered satellite-only service in East Timor. Iridium satellite Internet and Voice access was available for communications in rural areas without infrastructure.
East Timor uses 220V at 50Hz. Power outlets are type C, E, F, I and telephone jacks are RJ-11.
Dial-up Internet Access
Dial-up access was not available in East Timor. Satellite Internet was the recommended alternative.
WiFi Hotspot Access
WiFi hotspot access was not available through Tempest in East Timor.
Adapters & Power
Travelers from North America will need a power plug adapter. European Type C/F adapters are widely compatible.
Standard RJ-11 jacks are used. Most international modems will connect without an adapter.
East Timor at a Glance
- Capital
- Dili
- Phone Code
- +670
- Voltage
- 220V / 50Hz
- Power Plug
- C, E, F, I
- Phone Jack
- RJ-11
- Currency
- USD
- Dial-up
- N/A
- WiFi
- N/A
About connectivity in East Timor
East Timor (Timor-Leste) uses 220V/50Hz with Type C, Type E, Type F, and Type I outlets — a four-type mix reflecting Portuguese colonial, Indonesian (1975-1999) occupation, and post-2002 independent infrastructure layers. The phone jack is RJ-11. Timor Telecom, the post-2003 operator (originally a Portugal Telecom joint venture), holds substantial market position alongside Telkomcel (the Indonesian Telkom subsidiary) and Telemor (Vietnamese Viettel).
East Timorese commercial Internet was rebuilt after the country's 1999 independence referendum and the subsequent Indonesian withdrawal. Timor Telecom launched commercial services in 2003. Mobile data dominates current Internet access.
The East Timorese prepaid international calling-card market through the 2000s served the small diaspora — concentrated in Australia (the historic post-1975 refugee community, particularly in Darwin), Portugal (the colonial-era diaspora), and Indonesia.
Tempest Telecom served East Timor through dial-up POPs in Dili. The post-1999 reconstruction generated substantial NGO, UN, and humanitarian customer demand for Iridium and BGAN data services.
Modern East Timor has expanding mobile-data coverage; FTTH is concentrated in Dili. The country remains one of the smaller telecom markets in Southeast Asia.
Tempest's services across East Timor, 1997–2012
Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in East Timor between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in East Timor drew from the same balance for pre-paid international voice calling, RADIUS-authenticated dial-up Internet roaming, metered Wi-Fi hotspot access, Iridium satellite voice, and Inmarsat BGAN data terminals. An attempted kiosk-payment federation (PATN, 1998) extended the same architecture to public Internet terminals but failed to reach scale.
Iridium satellite voice was available in East Timor from approximately 2001 (post-bankruptcy relaunch). Thuraya coverage did not extend to East Timor; Inmarsat BGAN data terminals filled the broadband gap from late 2005.
Nearby countries in Asia
Brunei · Burma · Cambodia · China · Georgia · Hong Kong · India · Indonesia