eSIM and SIM cards in Colombia

Four networks, all cheap by European standards, and one piece of local bureaucracy that catches people who stay more than a couple of weeks.

• Claro is the biggest and has the coverage nobody else matches once you leave the main corridor - the coffee region, the Guajira, the smaller Caribbean towns.
• Movistar and Tigo are both perfectly good in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Cartagena and noticeably thinner outside them.
• WOM is the price fighter, with prepaid packages starting at a few thousand pesos. Coverage is city-only in practice.
• Expect a small five-figure sum in pesos for a tourist data package, and very little for the SIM itself. Mobile data is one of the few things in Colombia that is cheap for a visitor rather than expensive.

The IMEI rule

Colombia keeps a national registry of handset IMEIs, and a phone that is not on it can be cut off. This is the thing that goes wrong for people who buy a local SIM.

• You have 20 days from activating the line to register the handset's IMEI. Registration is free and the shop that sells you the SIM will normally do it on the spot if you ask.
• A handset the network reads as having an invalid IMEI can be blocked in 48 hours, and a non-homologated one in 45 days.
• Ask the assistant explicitly to register the IMEI when you buy. It is a two-minute job at the counter and an unfixable problem from a hostel in Salento.
• Roaming on your own foreign SIM is not affected - the rule bites only when a Colombian line is in the phone.

eSIM and buying

• Claro and WOM both sell prepaid eSIM, which is the least painful route for a short trip. Saily covers Colombia too, at USD 4.99 for 1 GB over 7 days or USD 16.99 for 5 GB over 30 days, and for two weeks that difference is not worth the errand.
• Bring your passport. Registering the line to a document is routine here.
• Buy in an official shop, not from a street stall. Claro, Movistar and Tigo all have branches in every mall, and the airport counters at Bogotá and Medellín sell tourist packages.