Eritrea
Power & telecom standards in Eritrea
Connectivity Overview
Tempest Telecom offered dial-up internet access, WiFi hotspot access and broadband ethernet access in Eritrea. We also offered Iridium satellite Internet and Voice access in Eritrea for communications in rural areas without infrastructure.
Eritrea uses 230V at 50Hz. Power outlets are type C, L and telephone jacks are RJ-11.
Dial-up Internet Access
Tempest Telecom provided local dial-up access numbers in Eritrea at $0.255/minute. Travelers could connect using any standard modem with an RJ-11 telephone adapter.
WiFi Hotspot Access
Tempest Telecom provided WiFi hotspot access in Eritrea at $19.95/day for unlimited browsing.
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.
Eritrea at a Glance
- Capital
- Asmara
- Phone Code
- +291
- Voltage
- 230V / 50Hz
- Power Plug
- C, L
- Phone Jack
- RJ-11
- Currency
- Nakfa
- Dial-up
- $0.255/min
- WiFi
- $19.95/day
About connectivity in Eritrea
Eritrea uses 220V/50Hz with Type C and Type E outlets — Italian colonial-era wiring influence (Eritrea was an Italian colony from 1882 to 1947). The phone jack is RJ-11. EriTel holds the state monopoly on Eritrean telecom; the country has no licensed private competitors.
Eritrean commercial Internet is among the most constrained globally — the country has the lowest Internet penetration rates in the world per various Freedom House and ITU measurements. International bandwidth is routed through state-controlled channels with extensive surveillance.
The Eritrean prepaid international calling-card market through the 2000s and 2010s served the very large Eritrean outbound diaspora — the country's post-1993 indefinite-national-service framework has driven sustained emigration, with concentrations in Sudan, Ethiopia, Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom, and across the European refugee-receiving countries.
Tempest Telecom served Eritrea through dial-up POPs in Asmara. The Red Sea maritime industry and limited international development customer base generated modest Iridium demand.
Modern Eritrea has limited mobile-data coverage by global standards; Internet access remains tightly controlled.
Tempest's services across Eritrea, 1997–2012
Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in Eritrea between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in Eritrea drew from the same balance for pre-paid international voice calling, RADIUS-authenticated dial-up Internet roaming, metered Wi-Fi hotspot access, Iridium and Thuraya satellite voice, and Inmarsat BGAN and Thuraya data terminals. An attempted kiosk-payment federation (PATN, 1998) extended the same architecture to public Internet terminals but failed to reach scale.
Both Iridium (global LEO) and Thuraya (regional GEO) satellite voice were available in Eritrea from approximately 2001, alongside global BGAN data from late 2005.
Nearby countries in Africa
Congo. Democratic Republic of the · Djibouti · Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Ethiopia · Gabon · Gambia · Ghana