Local SIM in Madagascar: Yas (ex-Telma), Orange or Airtel, and the signal from Nosy Be to the parks

Part of our Madagascar eSIM guide: all articles and key facts →

A Madagascar local SIM is the cheapest way to get data on the island, and the choice is between three networks: Yas, the new name of Telma, Orange and Airtel. We read the operators' own pages on 20 October 2026, together with nPerf's speed and coverage reports and its crowdsourced maps of Nosy Be, Andasibe, Ranomafana and Isalo. Here is what each network offers a visitor, and where a signal was actually recorded.

Telma, Yas, Orange, Airtel: who is who?

Madagascar has three mobile networks: Yas (formerly Telma), Orange Madagascar and Airtel Madagascar. Telma became Yas in November 2024, when its owner Axian Telecom moved its operators in Madagascar, Comoros, Senegal, Togo and Tanzania to a single brand. Yas says in its rebranding FAQ that there will be no change to its core services, prices or contracts. Several eSIM sellers, such as Orange Travel and aloSIM, still say "Telma": it is the same network.

Orange Madagascar belongs to the French Orange group, and Airtel Madagascar to Airtel Africa. The regulator is the ARTEC, which states on its website that 4G reached 80% of the population in 2024 and 3G 98%. It publishes no operator-by-operator coverage map that we could read, so the figures below come from nPerf.

Which network is fastest in Madagascar?

Yas, by a wide margin, followed by Orange; Airtel is far behind. nPerf's 2026 barometer of mobile internet in Madagascar is built from speed tests run by users of the nPerf app between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026.

nPerf notes that Yas has led its Madagascar barometer for five years in a row and that Airtel cut its latency by 68% in a year, from 271.21 ms to 87.89 ms. On 5G alone, Yas users averaged 359.36 Mb/s and Orange users 337.35 Mb/s; Airtel has no 5G result in the report.

This matters for visitors because most travel eSIMs connect to Airtel. Holafly, Airalo and Yesim name Airtel on their Madagascar pages; our comparison of Madagascar eSIMs lists the few that use Yas or Orange.

Which network covers the most of Madagascar?

On 4G, Airtel and Yas are level and Orange trails, according to nPerf's 2026 coverage barometer. The coverage barometer, covering September 2025 to August 2026, uses signal readings recorded by Android users of the nPerf app. It splits the country into a grid and scores each operator only on the squares its own customers visited. nPerf writes that it complements the operators' theoretical maps and does not replace them.

For 5G, Yas scored 43.18% and Orange 28.98%, with geographic 5G coverage of 20.84% and 9.20%. The regional results, using the six former provinces, matter more for a traveller:

• Antananarivo: Yas 87.31%, Orange 87.03%, Airtel 84.50%.
• Fianarantsoa (the RN7 via Fianarantsoa and Ihosy, and Isalo): Yas 80.78%, Airtel 66.64%, Orange 38.70%.
• Toliara (the end of the RN7 and the south-west): Airtel 75.20%, Yas 60.50%, Orange 46.38%, from far fewer readings than the capital.
• Antsiranana (the far north, facing Nosy Be): Airtel 92.46%, Yas 77.04%, Orange 71.29%, but Orange users supplied about 80% of the readings there and Airtel users only a sliver, so Airtel's lead rests on very few measurements.
• Toamasina (the east coast region): Airtel 89.37%, Yas 79.66%, Orange 63.04%.

Because each operator is measured where its own customers went, a high score means 4G was recorded in most of the squares its own users visited, not that the network reaches every forest trail. The maps below show the detail.

What does the Yas tourist eSIM include?

The Yas tourist eSIM costs 60,000 Ar, or €12 according to Yas, for 30 days with 5 GB of data, one hour of national calls, 5 minutes of international calls and 50 SMS. Yas adds that the euro price may vary with the exchange rate; at the central bank rate of 19 October 2026, 5,050.02 Ar to the euro, 60,000 Ar is about €11.88. The international minutes reach a list of 40 countries, including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Spain and Réunion.

Yas sells it in nine shops: Diego Foch, Fort Dauphin, Morondava, Nosy Be Mall, Sainte Marie, Tamatave Avenue, Tuléar, Zoom Ankorondrano in Antananarivo, and its shop at Ivato airport. The steps are to buy a voucher in the shop, register with the help of Yas staff, then scratch and scan the QR code on the voucher. The phone list on that page stops at the iPhone 14 and Galaxy S22, so check a newer model on our list of eSIM-compatible phones instead.

Once you have a Yas line, its prepaid internet bundles cost little, all activated with a USSD code:

What does Orange Madagascar offer a visitor?

Orange publishes no tourist offer, but its Akama+ 20 GB bundle is the cheapest 30-day bundle per gigabyte we found: 20 GB for 30,000 Ar, about €5.94. The Akama+ page lists three bundles: 1 GB for 24 hours at 1,000 Ar, 3 GB for 7 days at 5,000 Ar (about €0.99) and 20 GB for 30 days at 30,000 Ar. Unused data is lost when the bundle expires.

Orange's eSIM is less suited to a short stay. Its eSIM page says you activate an eSIM online by buying a "So Smart" plan on Orange Shop and choosing the eSIM option; the Smart monthly plans start at 18,500 Ar a month. For a visitor, a physical Orange SIM from a shop, topped up with Akama+, is the simpler route. We found no Orange page listing its shops at Ivato or the documents a foreigner must show.

And Airtel Madagascar?

Airtel's website could not be read, so we cannot quote a single Airtel price or tourist offer. The Airtel Madagascar site is a JavaScript application that showed no readable offer or price when we loaded it on 20 October 2026.

What is measured is clear, though. Airtel was the slowest network in nPerf's speed barometer (10.49 Mb/s download) and the joint leader for 4G coverage in its coverage barometer, first in the Toliara, Antsiranana, Toamasina and Mahajanga regions, although in Antsiranana and Toliara its users supplied few of the readings. If you buy a travel eSIM from Holafly, Airalo or Yesim, Airtel is the network you will use.

Does your phone work on Nosy Be?

On Yas and Orange, nPerf users recorded dense 4G and 5G around Hell-Ville and along the west coast; on Airtel, very few tests appear. Nosy Be, Madagascar's busiest tourist island according to Wikipedia, lies off the north-west coast in the Diana region, with its own international airport. We looked at nPerf's crowdsourced map around Hell-Ville for each operator on 20 October 2026. Each dot is a test by a user of the nPerf app, so the map shows where people measured a signal, not guaranteed coverage.

• Yas: dense 5G tests in Hell-Ville and on the west-coast road, 4G and 4G+ on the other roads of the island.
• Orange: 5G in Hell-Ville and on the west coast, 4G, 4G+ and some 3G elsewhere on the island's roads.
• Airtel: a handful of 4G tests around Hell-Ville and the south-west, a few with no signal, almost nothing elsewhere.

Few Airtel tests do not prove that Airtel is absent, but they mean nobody measured it much. For a beach stay on Nosy Be, the Yas tourist eSIM from the Nosy Be Mall shop, or a travel eSIM on Orange or Yas, is the safer bet. Yas is also the network aloSIM names, and Ubigi names Yas and Orange.

Is there signal in the national parks?

Near the park villages, usually yes on Yas; inside the forests and the Isalo massif, nPerf shows gaps or no tests at all. No operator publishes coverage for individual parks, and the travel eSIM seller Holafly warns that coverage "may be weaker or less stable" in parts of Masoala, Tsingy de Bemaraha and Isalo. Here is what nPerf's crowdsourced maps showed on 20 October 2026.

Andasibe-Mantadia

The park lies about 150 km east of Antananarivo, reached from Moramanga. On Yas, users recorded continuous 4G and 4G+ along the road from Moramanga to Andasibe and in the village, with 5G only in Moramanga. Orange alternated between 3G and 4G on the same road. On Airtel, users recorded almost nothing on that road, a few tests with no signal and a single 4G point, with only a few 3G points in the village.

Ranomafana

On the nPerf map around Ranomafana, all three networks showed stretches with no signal on the RN25 west of the village. Airtel users recorded continuous 4G on the road east towards Ifanadiana; Orange showed 2G on the western stretch and scattered 4G near the village; Yas showed scattered 4G and 3G around the village.

Isalo and the RN7

Around Ranohira, the gateway to Isalo National Park, nPerf showed no test at all on any network inside the sandstone massif. The only tests were on the RN7 at the edge of the view: 4G on Yas and Airtel, 3G and 4G on Orange. At regional level, Yas led the Fianarantsoa region (80.78%), which nPerf's map shows along the RN7 via Fianarantsoa and Ihosy.

Download offline maps before you leave a town, and expect to be offline on forest trails whatever SIM you carry.

Local SIM or travel eSIM: which costs less?

The local bundles cost far less per gigabyte; a travel eSIM saves a shop visit and works as you land. The table compares the cheapest local options with travel eSIM prices checked on 20 October 2026.

The local route has three costs that do not show in the table: the time to find a shop, a registration with staff, and a phone that is not locked to your home operator (read do you need an unlocked phone for a travel eSIM). We found no operator or ARTEC page listing the documents a foreign visitor must show, so take your passport to the shop.

Many travellers do both: a small travel eSIM for the arrival at Ivato, about 16 km from central Antananarivo, then a Yas or Orange line once in town. Keeping two lines is easy on a dual-SIM phone; our guide to running two eSIMs at the same time explains the settings.

What does "unlimited" really mean in Madagascar?

No local operator sells an unlimited data bundle on the pages we read; the travel eSIMs that do apply caps or reserve the right to slow you down. Yas's largest prepaid bundle is 100 GB for 30 days, and Orange's largest Akama+ bundle is 20 GB.

• Airalo: "Lower speed rate of 1 Mbps after 3 GB usage per day" on its Madagascar unlimited plans.
• Holafly: a fair usage slowdown "for no more than one (1) day", and 1 GB a day of hotspot sharing.
• Maya Mobile: its headline promises "no caps, no throttling", while the plan data on the same page reads "5GB Per Day full speed, then speed drops to 3Mbps"; its price card also reads "Auto-renews while Travel Mode is on", but its FAQ says the packages are one-time purchases, with no recurring charge unless you turn on Auto Top-Up.
• Yesim: "data speed may be limited in accordance with the network operator's Fair Usage Policy", with no figure.
• Orange Travel: no speed rule on its Madagascar page.

On a network averaging 10.49 Mb/s, as Airtel did in nPerf's barometer, an unlimited plan is limited more by speed than by any cap.

Combining Madagascar with Mauritius or Réunion?

A Malagasy SIM will not help you on the next island, so plan a second option. Our Mauritius local SIM guide covers the my.t, Emtel and CHiLi tourist packs, and the Mauritius eSIM guide gathers the rest. On esimdb on 20 October 2026, 3,724 plans from 169 providers appeared in both the Madagascar and Mauritius listings, which makes a single regional travel eSIM worth comparing with two local lines.

How do you set up a local eSIM?

Scan the QR code from the voucher, as for any eSIM, then turn data on for the new line. Yas's page explains the steps for iPhone and Samsung. If the line stays on "Activating", see our fixes for an eSIM stuck on activating; if staff ask for your EID, our guide shows where to find the EID number. Recent models such as the iPhone 17 range and the Galaxy S25 range support eSIM.

How we checked

We read the Yas eSIM and internet pages, Orange Madagascar's eSIM, offers and Akama+ pages, and the ARTEC home page on 20 October 2026. Airtel's site could not be read. Speed figures come from nPerf's April 2026 mobile barometer and coverage figures from its September 2026 coverage barometer; the map descriptions come from nPerf's crowdsourced maps viewed on 20 October 2026 for Hell-Ville, Andasibe, Ranomafana and Ranohira. Euro amounts use the central bank rate of 19 October 2026. We did not buy a SIM or measure signal in Madagascar. Bundles change often, so check the operator's page or shop before you buy.