This is one of the rare countries where the counter is not the expensive option, it is the cheap one by an order of magnitude. Our Telekom will sell you 5 GB over seven days for about 55 Solomon dollars, near seven US dollars, and throw the SIM in with it. The only travel eSIM sold for this country wants USD 75 for a single gigabyte. Whatever you have read about skipping local carriers elsewhere, park it at the door of the Honiara arrivals hall. What follows is what each operator actually charges in SBD, what the National Subscriber Registry rule involves now that it is enforced, where the shops are, and the harder question underneath all of it: the coverage you are buying stops long before the reefs and wrecks you came for.
What This Guide Covers
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Our Telekom and bmobile, and Nothing Else
There are two mobile networks in the Solomon Islands and there have only ever been two that matter. Our Telekom is the Solomon Telekom Company, majority owned by the Solomon Islands National Provident Fund, and it is the incumbent in every sense: it operates in all nine provinces, it carries the fixed network as well as the mobile one, and it is the name on most of the towers you will pass. bmobile is the local arm of the bmobile-vodafone group that also runs in Papua New Guinea. It arrived to break the monopoly, it competes hard in Honiara, and it is much thinner once you leave the capital and the biggest provincial towns.
Our Telekom launched 4G in Honiara in November 2017 on Band 28 and Band 3, and has been extending it to provincial hubs since. Sustained investment in outer-island base stations has taken population coverage to roughly 80 percent. Read that number carefully, because in a country of 992 islands strung across 1,450 km of ocean, population coverage and geographic coverage are two completely different claims. Four fifths of Solomon Islanders live within reach of a tower. Nothing like four fifths of the water you will cross on a dive boat does.
Which one a visitor should actually buy
bmobile is the easier purchase, because its shop sits in the Honiara International arrivals area a few steps past customs and it is genuinely hard to walk past. Our Telekom is the better network, because it operates across all nine provinces and travellers consistently report it holding a signal on day trips to offshore islands where bmobile has already given up. If you are staying in Honiara for a night and flying out to a province, that trade is worth a trip into town. There is no 5G on either network, so speed is not the deciding factor. Reach is.
What a Prepaid Bundle Costs in Solomon Dollars
Prices here move with promotions and the counter card beats any table on the internet, including this one, but the shape of the market has been stable and the figures below reflect what travellers were paying through 2026. The exchange rate sits near 8.3 SBD to the US dollar, which makes the arithmetic easy: divide by eight and you are close enough.
| Operator | Bundle | Price (SBD) | Roughly (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Our Telekom | 2.5 GB, 2 days | 20 | $2.40 |
| Our Telekom | 4 GB, 6 days | 45 | $5.50 |
| Our Telekom | 5 GB, 7 days | 55 | $6.70 |
| bmobile | SIM card itself | 30 | $3.60 |
| bmobile | 4 GB, 7 days | 27 | $3.30 |
| bmobile | 6 GB, 7 days | 50 | $6.10 |
| bmobile | 10 GB, 30 days | 100 | $12.10 |
| Nomad eSIM | 1 GB, 7 days | about 620 | $75.00 |
Our Telekom generally waives the cost of the SIM when you buy a data bundle with it. bmobile charges around 30 SBD for the card and then prices its bundles slightly under Our Telekom, which is how a challenger with less reach competes. On a pure per-gigabyte basis bmobile's 10 GB month at 100 SBD is the best value on the board, at about a dollar twenty a gigabyte.
The mistake that costs real money
Off-bundle data on Our Telekom defaults to roughly 0.99 SBD per megabyte. That is close to a thousand Solomon dollars per gigabyte, which is more than a hundred US dollars, charged silently against your credit while a background app syncs. Never sit on a Solomons prepaid line with credit and no active bundle. Buy the bundle at the counter, confirm with the staff that it is live before you walk away, and top up before the old one lapses rather than after. If your balance is dropping and you cannot work out why, that rate is why.
Longer-validity bundles exist on both networks and they are priced much less generously per gigabyte than the seven-day options, so a three-week visitor is usually better off buying a weekly bundle three times than one long one. Recharge cards are sold in shops and kiosks across Honiara and in the provincial towns, and both operators let you buy bundles by USSD short code or through their own site once you have credit on the line.
The National Subscriber Registry Rule
Anonymous prepaid lines are finished here. The Telecommunications (Subscriber Registration) Directives 2023 created a National Subscriber Registry held by the Telecommunications Commission of Solomon Islands, and the nationwide registration exercise began on 1 June 2024. Every operator, dealer and agent has to record subscriber details against a valid identity document before the line carries traffic. Solomon Islanders can use a birth certificate, voter ID, driving licence or NPF membership card. A visitor uses a passport, and there is no informal way around it.
How the purchase runs at the counter
1. Hand over your passport. Bring the actual booklet rather than a photo of the data page, because the details are keyed into the register while you wait.
2. Say up front how long you are staying and where you are going. The Gizo or Munda answer should push the staff toward Our Telekom.
3. Pick the bundle before you pay, not after, so the credit never sits exposed to the per-megabyte rate.
4. Pay in Solomon dollars. Cash is the safe assumption outside the main Honiara branches.
5. Load a map or a large photo before you leave the shop. If it stalls, you are still standing in front of the person who can fix it.
Two practical consequences of the register. First, each traveller has to be present for their own line, so one person cannot equip a family while everyone else waits with the dive bags. Second, this is the entire case for the eSIM: skipping the register is the one thing USD 75 actually buys, and it is worth weighing honestly against a five-minute queue rather than dismissing.
Where to Buy One, from HIR to Point Cruz
Honiara International Airport. bmobile runs a shop in the arrivals area immediately past customs, and travellers describe it as impossible to miss in a terminal that small. Telekom SIMs are also sold in the terminal. This is the fastest route to a working phone, and it is the reason most visitors end up on bmobile whether or not it was the better choice for their itinerary. The Honiara Airport guide covers the arrivals layout, the WiFi situation and the run into town.
Honiara town. Both operators keep branches in the Point Cruz business district and along Mendana Avenue, the road that carries almost everything in the capital between Point Cruz, the Central Market and Ranadi. Our Telekom's main office is the place to go if you want a considered conversation about provincial coverage rather than a quick transaction. Hours are ordinary business hours plus Saturday mornings, and Sunday is quiet across the whole city.
The provinces. Our Telekom has branches and agents in the provincial centres, including Auki on Malaita, Gizo and Noro in the Western Province, and Taro in Choiseul. You can buy and register a line there, but do not build a plan around it. Provincial branches keep shorter and less predictable hours, and if you arrive on the Friday afternoon flight to Gizo you may be waiting until Monday.
Topping up once you are out of the capital
Recharge cards are the currency of the provinces. They are sold in trade stores, kiosks and fuel stations well beyond where a carrier branch exists, so buy a couple in Honiara and carry them the way you carry cash. Speaking of which: bring Solomon dollars in notes. Card acceptance is reasonable in central Honiara and thin to nonexistent once you are on a provincial island, and there is no ATM on the airport side of the terminal.
Seventy-Five Dollars, or Seven
Across most of this site the argument runs the other way: the airport counter takes your passport and overcharges, and a travel eSIM undercuts it. Here the numbers invert completely, so the honest split looks like this.
Buy the local card when
Buy the eSIM when
There is a third answer that a lot of experienced Pacific travellers land on: buy both, and stop treating it as a choice. The eSIM carries you from the aircraft door to the guesthouse, and an Our Telekom card bought the next morning carries the trip. Total cost is under a hundred dollars and you are never offline at the one moment when being offline is genuinely awkward. The Solomon Islands eSIM guide lays out what the eSIM does and does not cover, and the eSIM Finder is the quicker way to size a plan if the Solomons is one leg of a longer Pacific run. For context on how differently this market behaves from an unlimited-data country, our Holafly review covers the model that does not exist here at all.
What Your SIM Stops Doing Past Honiara
The uncomfortable part. Almost nobody flies to the Solomon Islands to spend a week in Honiara. They come for the wreck diving, and the wreck diving is somewhere else.
The exception proves the point. The Bonegi wrecks, the Hirokawa Maru and the Kinugawa Maru, are two Japanese freighters run aground on a beach about twenty minutes west of the capital, and they are shore dives inside the city's coverage. You can surface from the Kinugawa Maru and check your messages standing on the sand. That is the only major dive in the country where that is true.
Where the network is not
Iron Bottom Sound is the stretch of water between Guadalcanal, Savo and the Nggela Islands, and once a boat is sitting over it the signal is intermittent at best. The Toa Maru, a 130 m Japanese transport, lies off Gizo in the Western Province, an hour's flight from Honiara. Munda, Marovo Lagoon and Uepi are further again. All of it is reached by a Solomon Airlines domestic flight followed by a boat, and both operators fade within minutes of the wharf. Resort WiFi over a shared satellite or microwave link is what you will actually be using out there, and it is slow and often confined to the main building.
So buy the local card for what it is genuinely good at: the capital, the airport road, the coast west to the Vilu War Museum, the battlefield sites in the hills behind town, and the provincial towns themselves. Then treat the diving days as offline days by design. Download your charts, your dive briefings and your boarding passes while you still have Honiara's 4G, tell whoever is waiting on you that you will be out of contact for three days, and enjoy the fact that the Solomons is one of the last places where that is simply true rather than a pose.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our Telekom or bmobile, which one should a visitor walk out with?
Our Telekom if you are leaving Honiara at any point, because it operates across all nine provinces and travellers consistently report it holding a signal on offshore day trips after bmobile has dropped out. bmobile if convenience wins, because its shop is in the arrivals area at Honiara International a few steps past customs and its bundles are marginally cheaper. Neither network has 5G, so this is a decision about reach rather than speed. If you are flying on to Gizo or Munda, the trip into town for a Telekom card is worth making.
What does a week of data actually come to in Solomon dollars?
Around 55 SBD on Our Telekom for a 5 GB seven-day bundle, or about 50 SBD on bmobile for 6 GB over the same period plus roughly 30 SBD for the card itself. Call it 55 to 80 SBD all in, which is seven to ten US dollars. Our Telekom usually waives the SIM fee when you buy a bundle with it. For comparison, the only travel eSIM on sale for this country charges the equivalent of about 620 SBD for one gigabyte, which is the entire reason this page exists.
Can a travel companion pick up a SIM for me while I mind the bags?
No. Since the National Subscriber Registry came into force in June 2024, every line is registered against a named individual's identity document, and for a visitor that means your own passport presented in person at the counter. Each person in a group has to do their own. It is only a few minutes each, but plan for it if four of you land together on the same flight and the terminal is working through a full arrival.
Does it make sense to buy the eSIM and a local card?
For a lot of people, yes, and it is what experienced Pacific travellers tend to do. The eSIM gives you a live map and messaging from the moment you clear customs at Honiara International, which matters because the terminal has no dependable public WiFi, no ATM on that side, and unmetered taxis outside that you negotiate in cash. Then you buy an Our Telekom bundle the next morning for the rest of the trip. It costs under a hundred dollars in total and removes the one genuinely awkward hour.
Will my Solomon Islands SIM work on the boat out to Gizo or Uepi?
Not for most of it. Both networks cover the provincial towns themselves, so Gizo and Munda are fine while you are standing in them, but coverage falls away within minutes of the wharf and Marovo Lagoon and Uepi are effectively offline for mobile data. Resorts run their own WiFi over shared links and it is slow, so download offline maps and anything you need to read before you leave Honiara. This is a country where the diving days are offline days, whichever card you bought.