
Mobile communications and Internet in Panama
Compared to the United States, Panama has a slight downturn in the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +507, there were a total of 6.79 million connections in 2021. Among them were 6.00 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.4 per person. In the US, this figure is 1.1 mobile phones per person.With about 11,022 webhosts, Panama is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 6,371 of these, or about 58 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
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Internet speed for cell phones and fixed network
With an average download speed of 123.65 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Panama ranks 25th in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 14.73 Mbit/second was significantly lower (110th place).In mobile internet, i.e., on tablets and smartphones, Panama comes 115th with a download speed of 17.39 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 13 Mbit was enough for 47th place.
The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in April 2023 from 180 countries.
Mobile phone rates in Panama
Every year, the International Telecommunication Union calculates for many countries what a mobile phone contract costs to use. A monthly budget averaging US$ 21.80 was calculated Panama in 2021. This is about the same value as in the previous year.The ITU refers to the costs for monthly use and includes 140 telephony minutes, 70 text messages and a data transfer of 2 GBytes. The transfer speed should be the minimum of a 3G connection, i.e. at least UMTS, which is already outdated in many parts of the world. 2 GBytes do not sound much. However, this is already quite a high consumption in a worldwide comparison. If one does not take a fixed amount in US dollars, but converts it to the economic output per inhabitant, a user in Panama spends 2.1% of his gross national income on mobile telephony. Worldwide, this rate is around 6.6 percent.
In the USA, the monthly cost was around $38.10.
Lack of network coverage with 5G
A modern 5G network does not yet exist in Panama (as of 2021). The penetration rate of 4G, i.e., mobile communications with at least LTE speed, was recently 84 percent. In other words, 696,202.72 people in the country had to make do with a maximum Internet speed of the outdated UMTS standard (or even less).The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100 percent mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the internet in Panama from 1990 - 2021
Broadband internet in Panama 2001 - 2021

Landlines 1990 - 2021
Mobile phones 1990 - 2021
Distribution in 2021 | Panama Total | Panama percent | USA Total | USA percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 2.94 m | 67.51 % | 304.52 m | 91.75 % |
Broadband users | 605,838.00 | 13.92 % | 125.89 m | 37.93 % |
Landlines | 790,486.00 | 18.17 % | 97.82 m | 29.47 % |
Mobile cellulars | 6.00 m | 137.97 % | 361.66 m | 108.97 % |