The regulator and the legal framework
Panama’s telecommunications are a regulated public service, and the regulator is the Autoridad Nacional de los Servicios Públicos (ASEP). The framework law is Ley No. 31 de 8 de febrero de 1996, which establishes telecommunications as a public service and sets the regulator’s objectives: to accelerate the modernization and development of the sector, promote private investment, extend access, improve service quality, promote low tariffs, and ensure fair competition in the provision of telecom services.[1] ASEP carries this mandate through its Dirección Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, the unit that handles concessions, spectrum, interconnection, and the sector statistics.[1]
The consumer-protection overlay sits with a separate body, the Autoridad de Protección al Consumidor y Defensa de la Competencia (ACODECO), which handles antitrust and consumer-protection matters under the Ministry of Commerce and Industries, the institution a subscriber would turn to over billing disputes or anti-competitive conduct. The public-services framework that ASEP administers also classifies services by type, with mobile telephony and personal communications services (PCS) treated as a distinct category from basic fixed telephony. The point for a reader is that Panama’s telecom regime is a single, coherent, ASEP-centered framework rather than a patchwork, which matters when the sector’s structure changes, as it has repeatedly over the past decade.
The mobile market: from four operators to two
The most consequential fact about Panama’s mobile market as of 2026 is how concentrated it has become. Through a series of consolidations and one exit, the number of operational mobile network operators fell from four in 2018 to two by 2024.[5] ASEP itself describes the situation plainly in its 2026 third-operator tender materials, framing the tender as a response to the reduction of the market from four to two operators over the preceding years.[2]
The consolidation timeline runs as follows. In 2018, consolidation legislation (the 2018 measure the cited industry analysis records as Law No. 479) enabled mobile-market consolidation. In 2019, Millicom (Tigo) acquired Telefónica Móviles Panamá (Movistar). In 2022, Cable & Wireless Panamá, which operates commercially as Más Móvil, completed the acquisition of Claro Panamá from América Móvil for roughly US$200 million, a step that effectively moved the market from four operators to three.[5] Then, across 2022–2024, Digicel wound down its Panamanian operation; after an extended process it closed and migrated its customers, leaving only two operators.[5] The result, as of 2026, is a duopoly of Más Móvil (the CWP-plus-Claro combination) and Tigo (Millicom), the two choices ASEP’s tender materials refer to when they note that more than four and a half million Panamanians were left with just two carriers.[2] For one of those two operators the in-window financial picture is public: Tigo (Millicom) reported Panama service revenue of about $172 million for Q1 2026, up 0.1% year-on-year, on a 50.7% adjusted-EBITDA margin, though the parent discloses Panama service revenue rather than a Panama-specific mobile-subscriber count.[10]
That duopoly is the backdrop for everything else. A two-operator market is unusual in a country of Panama’s income level, and it is the specific problem ASEP’s 2026 third-operator tender is designed to fix.
The 2026 third-operator tender
As of June 2026, ASEP is running a public tender, a licitación, to bring a third mobile network operator into the market. The procedural anchor is Resolución AN No. 21129-Telco of 9 December 2025, which establishes the 2026 calendar of concession-application windows.[3] That calendar lays out six windows across 2026 for Type B concessions and satellite-frequency requests, with the relevant window for the third-operator tender falling in the May round (the third window, May 4–8, 2026).[3]
The tender’s terms, as set out in ASEP’s June 2026 press release, are designed to make a new entrant viable. The new operator would receive an initial allocation of 40 MHz of spectrum in mid-bands and would have the option to build a 5G Stand Alone (SA) architecture from its initial phase, rather than inheriting a legacy non-standalone setup.[2] A larger block (on the order of 110 MHz across the 700 MHz, AWS, and 1900 MHz bands) was pre-reserved for the third operator as of early 2026,[5] and ASEP’s March 2026 IMT spectrum report lays out the band-by-band allocation that underlies that reservation.[11] The tender is presented as a response to clear market demand: ASEP notes that number portability has accumulated more than 5.5 million transactions since its implementation in 2011, evidence that Panamanian subscribers do switch carriers when given the chance.[2] The tender process is still developing, and its outcome (whether a qualified bidder emerges, on what terms, and on what timeline) should be re-verified against current ASEP notices before any decision is based on it.
Network coverage and the 4G/5G rollout
The physical network is in comparatively good shape, which is what makes the two-operator structure a competition problem rather than a coverage problem. As of June 2026, ASEP reports mobile coverage of roughly 96% of the population and access to 4G networks for approximately 86% of inhabitants, with about 79% of all mobile lines on prepaid plans.[2] 5G service of the non-standalone (NSA) type has been available since 2025, and the third-operator tender is explicitly designed to allow a new entrant to deploy 5G Stand Alone from the start.[2]
These figures should be read as a June 2026 snapshot. The 96% / 86% / 79% numbers come from ASEP’s tender press release, and the underlying sector statistics are published in ASEP’s Informe del Mercado through its statistics hub.[4] ASEP’s own current statistics on that hub (published as interactive charts that are aggregate-by-service, not a per-operator split) put fixed lines in operation at 894,698 in 2024 (19.8% penetration, recovering from a 2023 dip to 774,060), fixed-broadband customers at 761,851 in 2024 rising to a 783,609 estimate for 2025, and mobile penetration at 110.2 per 100 inhabitants in 2024 (down from a 2022 peak of 152.2); the mobile series is broken out prepaid versus postpaid, not by operator.[4] The precise subscriber and penetration counts that analysts cite, for example the 5.07 million active mobile lines and the 111% penetration (more lines than people) figure that circulated in early-2026 industry analysis, are secondary restatements of the ASEP market report; ASEP’s own public materials round these to “more than five million active lines” and “penetration exceeding the size of the population,” which is the primary-confirmed version.[2][5]
Fixed broadband, internet use, and the international backbone
The fixed and internet side of the sector is measured separately and tells a different story. The World Bank’s data, sourced from the ITU, puts internet use at 72.77% of the population in 2024, the most recent point available.[6] For subscriptions, the last published World Bank/ITU data points are 2023-vintage: about 156.59 mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people and about 18.13 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.[7][8] A note of caution on comparison: the 2023 ITU subscription figures and the 2026 ASEP active-lines figures measure different things (subscriptions versus active lines) in different years for different reporting bodies, and they should not be presented as if they confirm one another.[7]
Panama’s international connectivity is a genuine strength. The country is landing point and node for seven submarine cables, hosts roughly seventeen data centers, and has on the order of 40,000 km of domestic fiber routes, per the same early-2026 industry analysis that cites ASEP’s market report.[5] That backbone is the physical reason Panama functions as a regional digital and logistics hub despite the small domestic market. On speed, Panama ranked 95th in the world for mobile speeds and 33rd for fixed broadband speeds in May 2026 on Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index (a middling mobile position and a comparatively strong fixed-broadband one, consistent with a market that has good fiber and data-center infrastructure but limited mobile competition).[9] The median figures behind those rankings, as of May 2026, are about 32.6 Mbps download on mobile (14.8 up) and 220.2 Mbps download on fixed broadband (21.5 up). The wide gap between the two layers is itself the network-quality signature of the duopoly, with a strong fixed-fiber backbone sitting above a middling mobile layer.[9]
How to read the numbers together
A reader trying to form an overall picture should hold three things at once. First, the infrastructure is solid: high population coverage, 4G nearly universal, 5G launched, a strong submarine-cable and data-center backbone, and respectable fixed-broadband speeds. Second, the market structure is concentrated (two mobile operators as of 2026, after a decade of consolidation and exit), which is the specific problem the third-operator tender addresses. Third, almost every number above is volatile and date-stamped: the penetration and coverage figures shift as ASEP re-issues its market report, the Ookla ranking re-ranks monthly, and the tender outcome is unresolved. The “as of” qualifiers on this page are not editorial hedging; they are the honest description of a sector in motion.
Submarine cables and the digital-hub thesis
Beyond the mobile duopoly, Panama’s telecom story has a second strand: its role as a regional connectivity hub. The country is the landing point for roughly seven submarine cables, hosts about seventeen data centers, and has on the order of 40,000 km of domestic fiber routes, infrastructure that supports not just domestic service but the country’s broader ambition to function as a digital and logistics hub for the region.[5] ASEP itself, in its third-operator tender materials, leans into this framing, presenting Panama’s dollarized economy, stable legal framework, and existing infrastructure as the conditions that make a new mobile entrant viable.[2] The hub thesis is partly aspirational, but the physical infrastructure is real, and it is the reason Panama’s fixed-broadband speeds rank comparatively well (33rd globally as of May 2026) even as its mobile ranks in the middle of the pack (95th). The fiber and data-center backbone outperforms the mobile competition.[9] For a country whose economy runs on the canal, banking, and logistics, the telecom backbone is not a consumer amenity; it is part of the basic infrastructure those sectors sit on.
What the duopoly costs
The two-operator mobile market has consequences that show up in the data and in the regulator’s rhetoric. When a market consolidates from four operators to two over a few years and then sits there, the competitive pressure on price, plan innovation, and service quality that a three- or four-player market generates is reduced, which is the specific problem ASEP is trying to correct with the 2026 third-operator tender.[2] The number-portability figure (more than 5.5 million transactions since 2011) is ASEP’s evidence that Panamanians do switch carriers when given the chance, implying latent demand for more choice than two operators provide.[2] How much a third operator would actually move prices is an open question that depends on the tender’s outcome, the new entrant’s strategy, and the incumbents’ response; the tender establishes the possibility of change rather than the result. The page’s date-stamping matters here more than anywhere else on it: the duopoly, the tender, and the coverage figures are all a mid-2026 snapshot of a sector in active restructuring, governed by a 2025 resolution whose calendar runs through the rest of 2026.[3]
Caveats on the numbers
This page covers the regulatory framework (ASEP, Ley 31/1996), the market structure (the 4→2 consolidation and the duopoly), the 2026 third-operator tender, network coverage and the 4G/5G rollout, the fixed-broadband and internet-use figures, and the international backbone. The most important caveat is recency: this is a current-volatility topic and every load-bearing figure is date-stamped to the month of its source; readers should re-verify against current ASEP materials before relying on any specific number. Operator-specific subscriber counts and market shares (e.g., Tigo’s or Más Móvil’s individual line counts) are not consistently disclosed in public primary sources and are generally reported only via paywalled industry outlets or secondary restatement, so this page presents operator-agnostic totals rather than per-operator splits, and that is not an evasion but a primary-record fact: ASEP’s own Estadísticas hub publishes aggregate-by-service figures (total fixed lines, broadband customers, and mobile prepaid-versus-postpaid) with no per-operator market-share breakdown, so no operator split is available to cite.[4] Some spectrum figures that appear in older operator filings are excluded here because they fall outside the recency window; the page uses the in-window ASEP and analyst figures instead. Consumer-setup guidance (choosing a SIM, plan pricing, eSIM availability) is out of scope here and belongs on the internet-and-communications page. For the official current state, consult ASEP’s telecomunicaciones page and the Informe del Mercado statistics hub directly.[1][4]
Last reviewed: