Gabon
Power & telecom standards in Gabon
Connectivity Overview
Tempest Telecom offered satellite-only service in Gabon. Iridium satellite Internet and Voice access was available for communications in rural areas without infrastructure.
Gabon uses 220V at 50Hz. Power outlets are type C and telephone jacks are RJ-11.
Dial-up Internet Access
Dial-up access was not available in Gabon. Satellite Internet was the recommended alternative.
WiFi Hotspot Access
WiFi hotspot access was not available through Tempest in Gabon.
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.
Gabon at a Glance
- Capital
- Libreville
- Phone Code
- +241
- Voltage
- 220V / 50Hz
- Power Plug
- C
- Phone Jack
- RJ-11
- Currency
- CFA Franc
- Dial-up
- N/A
- WiFi
- N/A
About connectivity in Gabon
Gabon uses 220V/50Hz with Type C outlets — French colonial-era wiring. The phone jack is RJ-11. Gabon Telecom (now part of the Maroc Telecom group) and Airtel Gabon compete in the country's telecom market.
Gabonese commercial Internet emerged in the late 1990s. Per-minute metered dial-up dominated. ADSL rolled out through the mid-2000s. Mobile data dominates current Internet access.
The Gabonese prepaid international calling-card market through the 2000s served the modest Gabonese diaspora — concentrated in France and across the Central African Community labor circuit.
Tempest Telecom served Gabon through dial-up POPs in Libreville. The substantial offshore oil-and-gas sector, the Ogooué basin timber operations, and the gorilla and equatorial-rainforest research customer base sustained Iridium demand.
Modern Gabon has expanding 4G LTE coverage with FTTH concentrated in Libreville.
Tempest's services across Gabon, 1997–2012
Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in Gabon between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in Gabon 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 Gabon from approximately 2001, alongside global BGAN data from late 2005.
Nearby countries in Africa
Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Eritrea · Ethiopia · Gambia · Ghana · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau