Stay Connected in Comoros

Connectivity in Comoros is, plainly put, a work in progress. The archipelago carries 4G across the main urban areas of Grande Comore, Anjouan, and Mohéli. But speeds and reliability vary widely depending on where you are and which carrier you're using. Moroni, the capital, has the best coverage you'll find anywhere in Comoros, and even there you'll hit noticeable slowdowns during peak evening hours. Two things catch travelers off guard. Coverage drops fast outside town. International roaming on a Comoros network is also painfully expensive. Power cuts knock out cell towers too, so even a strong signal can vanish without warning. The upside? Local SIM data is cheap by global standards, and getting connected is straightforward if you don't mind a bit of paperwork. Bring patience. Plan for connectivity in Comoros to be functional rather than fast, and you'll be fine.

Two carriers dominate the Comoros market: Comores Telecom (the state-linked incumbent, sometimes branded as Huri) and Telma Comores (the Madagascar-owned challenger that arrived in 2016 and shook prices loose). Comores Telecom tends to have broader rural reach across the three main islands, mainly on Anjouan and Mohéli where Telma's footprint thins out. Telma, for whatever reason, generally posts faster 4G speeds in Moroni and Mutsamudu and runs aggressive data promotions. Realistic 4G speeds in urban Comoros land in the 5-15 Mbps range on a good day, dropping to 3G or EDGE-equivalent once you head toward villages or up into the volcanic interior of Karthala. Video calls hold up in town. Expect the occasional dropout. Streaming is hit and miss. Coverage on Mohéli, the smallest and least developed island, is the spottiest of the three. Fair warning. If reliable data matters to you, Telma in town and Comores Telecom for travel beyond it is the combination most expats settle on.

Hotel and café WiFi in Comoros tends to be open, or shares a single password chalked on a board, which means anyone else on the network can potentially see unencrypted traffic. The risk isn't usually targeted attacks on tourists in Moroni. It's opportunistic snooping and credential harvesting that happens on any open network worldwide. Travelers are attractive targets because they're often logging into banking apps and email from unfamiliar networks. A VPN like NordVPN encrypts everything between your device and the VPN server, so even on a sketchy hotel network in Mutsamudu or a beach café on Mohéli, your traffic is unreadable to anyone sniffing the local WiFi. Set it and forget it. Auto-connect on untrusted networks. Avoid logging into financial accounts on hotel WiFi without a VPN running. That's the practical baseline.