Syria
Power & telecom standards in Syria
Connectivity Overview
Tempest Telecom offered satellite-only service in Syria. Iridium satellite Internet and Voice access was available for communications in rural areas without infrastructure.
Syria uses 220V at 50Hz. Power outlets are type C, E, L and telephone jacks are RJ-11.
Dial-up Internet Access
Dial-up access was not available in Syria. Satellite Internet was the recommended alternative.
WiFi Hotspot Access
WiFi hotspot access was not available through Tempest in Syria.
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.
Syria at a Glance
- Capital
- Damascus
- Phone Code
- +963
- Voltage
- 220V / 50Hz
- Power Plug
- C, E, L
- Phone Jack
- RJ-11
- Currency
- Pound
- Dial-up
- N/A
- WiFi
- N/A
About connectivity in Syria
Syria uses 220V/50Hz with Type C, Type E, and Type L outlets — a mix reflecting layered French Mandate-era and modern European-standard installations. The phone jack is RJ-11. The Syrian telecom sector is dominated by Syriatel (founded 2001, historically Rami Makhlouf-controlled) and MTN Syria, both operating under a state-controlled framework. STE (Syrian Telecommunications Establishment) holds fixed-line operations.
Syrian commercial Internet emerged in 2000 under tightly controlled state operator-only licensing. The Internet was substantially filtered and surveilled through the Assad-era information-control framework. The 2011-onward Syrian Civil War has fragmented telecom infrastructure across multiple controlling authorities (the Assad-government Damascus area, the Syrian Democratic Forces northeast, Turkish-controlled northern areas, the former Idlib HTS administration). Mobile data exists across most populated areas but with severe operational constraints.
Cardphone deployment was modest. The Syrian prepaid international calling-card market through the 2000s and 2010s was substantial in absolute volume because of the very large pre-war Syrian diaspora (concentrated in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Latin America — particularly Brazil and Argentina, which host historic Syrian-Lebanese communities). The post-2011 civil war displacement crisis dramatically expanded the Syrian diaspora — an estimated 6.7 million Syrian refugees abroad as of the mid-2020s, concentrated in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Germany, and the broader European refugee-receiving countries.
Tempest Telecom served Syria through dial-up POPs in Damascus. The pre-2011 archaeological-research customer base (Palmyra, Apamea, the Crac des Chevaliers UNESCO sites) and the post-2011 humanitarian and broadcast-journalist customer base across the civil-war zones generated substantial Iridium and BGAN customer demand.
Modern Syrian telecom infrastructure has been severely degraded by the ongoing civil war. Service quality and access vary widely by territory and controlling authority.
Tempest's services across Syria, 1997–2012
Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in Syria between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in Syria 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. The PATN kiosk-card clearinghouse (Tempest's TITAN kiOSK, incorporated 2000) extended the same card-and-PIN model to public Internet terminals but did not reach scale.
Both Iridium (global LEO) and Thuraya (regional GEO) satellite voice were available in Syria from approximately 2001, alongside global BGAN data from late 2005.
Nearby countries in Middle East
Kuwait · Lebanon · Oman · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · Turkey · United Arab Emirates · Yemen