Telecommunications: 38% of the population covered by 5G

The National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT) has just published the indicators and trends for the telecommunications sector. The regulator has released a summary of key events and the evolution of the sector’s various segments as of the end of December 2025. According to data collected by the Telecommunications Observatory, the mobile subscriber base reached 59.16 million operational GSM phones on December 31st. This represents an annual increase of 1.5% (more than 877,000 additional subscriptions compared to the end of 2024).
Thus, the mobile phone penetration rate will have reached 160.65% by the end of 2025. However, it’s important to note that the mobile subscriber base should be viewed in context, as 50.90 million subscriptions are prepaid. Postpaid subscriptions, the true performance indicator for the mobile subscriber base, represent only about 8.26 million subscribers. Overall, mobile outgoing traffic reached approximately 40.9 billion minutes throughout 2025, a decrease of 12.55% compared to 2024. Another indicator showing a decline was the average talk time, which stood at 58 minutes per subscriber per month. Thus, average monthly outgoing usage decreased by 15.1% year-on-year. For prepaid plans, average monthly usage per customer was 26 minutes, compared to 33 minutes in 2024. Conversely, for postpaid plans , average monthly usage per subscriber fell to 261 minutes in 2025, compared to 305 minutes in 2024.
Naturally, the downward trend in SMS messaging continued in 2025. The annual decrease was around 16.46%. This is mainly due to the proliferation of messaging apps like WhatsApp . In total, the number of SMS messages sent in 2025 reached 1.54 billion.
Another observation is that last year saw a significant increase in mobile number portability. By the end of 2025, the number of ported mobile numbers (those that had undergone number portability) had exceeded 1.61 million, representing a 9.5% increase compared to 2024.
Regarding internet subscriptions, the ANRT (National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency) reports a 3.09% annual increase in subscriptions as of the end of December. In the mobile internet segment, the number of subscriptions is projected to reach 38.52 million by 2025 (an annual increase of 2.89%). However, the number of 4G users has decreased by approximately 610,000 annually, settling at 33.74 million by the end of 2025. This is primarily due to the migration following the rollout of 5G in November 2025. Furthermore, the number of 5G users reached 2.63 million as of December 31st. According to the ANRT,
‘‘approximately 38% of the population will be covered by the 5G network by the end of 2025.”

Amin RBOUB