Liberia
Power & telecom standards in Liberia
Connectivity Overview
Tempest Telecom offered satellite-only service in Liberia. Iridium satellite Internet and Voice access was available for communications in rural areas without infrastructure.
Liberia uses 120V at 60Hz. Power outlets are type A, B, C, F and telephone jacks are RJ-11.
Dial-up Internet Access
Dial-up access was not available in Liberia. Satellite Internet was the recommended alternative.
WiFi Hotspot Access
WiFi hotspot access was not available through Tempest in Liberia.
Adapters & Power
North American (Type A/B) plugs are compatible. An adapter may not be needed for US travelers.
Standard RJ-11 jacks are used. Most international modems will connect without an adapter.
Liberia at a Glance
- Capital
- Monrovia
- Phone Code
- +231
- Voltage
- 120V / 60Hz
- Power Plug
- A, B, C, F
- Phone Jack
- RJ-11
- Currency
- LRD
- Dial-up
- N/A
- WiFi
- N/A
About connectivity in Liberia
Liberia uses 120V/60Hz with Type A, Type B, Type C, Type E, and Type F outlets — the most unusual five-type plug mix in West Africa, reflecting layered American (Liberia's founding by formerly-enslaved African-Americans in 1822 produced unusual North American wiring infrastructure) and European-standard installations. The phone jack is RJ-11. Lonestar Cell MTN and Orange Liberia compete in the country's telecom market.
Liberian commercial Internet was rebuilt almost from scratch following the country's 1989-2003 civil wars. Mobile data dominates current Internet access. The 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak shaped subsequent humanitarian-sector connectivity investment.
The Liberian prepaid international calling-card market through the 2000s served the substantial Liberian outbound diaspora — concentrated in the United States (particularly Minneapolis-St. Paul and Staten Island), Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and across the broader West African ECOWAS labor circuit.
Tempest Telecom served Liberia through dial-up POPs in Monrovia. The substantial humanitarian customer base across the 1989-2003 civil wars and the 2014-2015 Ebola response, plus the Firestone rubber operations and the iron-ore mining sector, sustained Iridium demand.
Modern Liberia has expanding mobile-data coverage in Monrovia and the regional centers.
Tempest's services across Liberia, 1997–2012
Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in Liberia between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in Liberia 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 Liberia from approximately 2001, alongside global BGAN data from late 2005.
Nearby countries in Africa
Guinea-Bissau · Ivory Coast · Kenya · Lesotho · Libya · Madagascar · Malawi · Mali