
Mobile communications and Internet in Uruguay
Compared to the United States, Uruguay is at the forefront of the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +598, there were a total of 5.93 million connections in 2021. Among them were 4.69 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 1.04 million webhosts, Uruguay is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 6,677 of these, or about 1 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Uruguay
Internet speed for cell phones and fixed network
With an average download speed of 113.48 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Uruguay ranks 28th in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 31.97 Mbit/second was significantly lower (65th place).In mobile internet, i.e., on tablets and smartphones, Uruguay comes 61st with a download speed of 36.34 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 12 Mbit was only enough for 65th 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 Uruguay
Every year, the International Telecommunication Union calculates for many countries what a mobile phone contract costs to use. A monthly budget averaging US$ 18.80 was calculated Uruguay 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 The transfer speed should be the minimum of a 3G connection, i.e. at least UMTS, which is already outdated in many parts of the world. 2 GBytes do not sound much.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 Uruguay spends 1.4% 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.
Network coverage with 5G
In 2021, network coverage with the 5G standard was already 5.3 percent of all inhabitants. The proportion of the population with at least 4G mobile Internet access was 92.3 percent. The 4G network standard includes both LTE and WiMAX.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 Uruguay from 1990 - 2021
Broadband internet in Uruguay 2004 - 2021

Landlines 1990 - 2021
Mobile phones 1990 - 2021
Distribution in 2021 | Uruguay Total | Uruguay percent | USA Total | USA percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 3.09 m | 90.07 % | 304.52 m | 91.75 % |
Broadband users | 1.11 m | 32.26 % | 125.89 m | 37.93 % |
Landlines | 1.24 m | 36.10 % | 97.82 m | 29.47 % |
Mobile cellulars | 4.69 m | 136.92 % | 361.66 m | 108.97 % |