One travel eSIM provider sells the Solomon Islands, and it is Nomad. There is no second option. Airalo publishes local plans for 216 countries and this is not one of them, and its Oceania regional pack stops at Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, Nauru and Papua New Guinea, skipping the Solomons entirely. Holafly sells Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and Papua New Guinea and has no Solomon Islands product either. So the realistic choice is Nomad or a local Our Telekom or bmobile line bought in Honiara.
Look at the numbers before you decide. Nomad's single Solomon Islands plan is 1 GB over seven days for USD 75, which is roughly 620 Solomon Islands dollars. Our Telekom sells 5 GB over seven days for about 55 SBD, near seven US dollars. That gap is not a rounding error, and it is the reverse of the advice this site gives almost everywhere else. Nomad earns its price only as a bridge: data working the moment you clear customs at Honiara International, with no passport scan and no queue. Beyond that first afternoon, the local card wins on every measure except paperwork.
Quick Pick: the Best eSIM for Solomon Islands
Nomad (Solomon Islands 1 GB / 7 days): The only travel eSIM sold for the country, riding bmobile, activated within 60 days of purchase and with tethering allowed. Buy it as a landing-day bridge rather than as your plan for the trip, because 75 dollars for a gigabyte is roughly ten times what Our Telekom charges for five.
Our picks
Best overall: Nomad. Lowest per GB: Nomad. Or use the eSIM Finder.
Solomon Islands eSIM Plans Compared
Indicative pricing. Tap through for live rates.
| Provider | Plan | Data | Duration | Price | Network |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nomad | Solomon Islands 1GB | 1 GB | 7 days | $75 | bmobile |
Nomad Solomon Islands Plans
Nomad: The Only eSIM Sold Here, and Priced Like It
One plan, one gigabyte, seventy-five dollars
Nomad's Solomon Islands product is a single line item. There is no 3 GB step up, no 30-day option and no unlimited tier, because the wholesale capacity to build one does not exist. You are buying 1 GB of high-speed data over seven days on bmobile for USD 75, with the profile activating whenever you first connect within sixty days of purchase. Tethering is permitted, which is more useful than it sounds when two of you are sharing a taxi into Honiara and only one bought the plan.
Judged as a data plan this is indefensible value, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Judged as a tool for one specific hour it is defensible. You land at Honiara International, immigration is manual and can take half an hour, there is no dependable public WiFi in the terminal, no ATM on the airport side, and the taxis outside are unmetered and negotiated in cash. Walking out of that building with a working phone, a live map and the ability to message a guesthouse is worth something. Whether it is worth 75 dollars is a judgement only you can make, and plenty of travellers will look at the bmobile counter a few steps past the customs desk and decide it is not.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Mobile Networks in Solomon Islands
The Solomon Islands is a double chain of 992 islands running roughly 1,450 km southeast from the Shortlands to the Santa Cruz group, split into nine provinces and a capital territory. A mobile network here is not a blanket over a landmass. It is a scatter of towers on the handful of islands where enough people live to justify one, and the map of where those towers sit is very close to the map of where visitors are not going.
Our Telekom, formally the Solomon Telekom Company, is the incumbent and the larger of the two operators. It is majority owned by the Solomon Islands National Provident Fund, it operates in all nine provinces, and base-station expansion onto the outer islands has pushed it to roughly 80 percent population coverage. Note what a population figure hides in a country shaped like this one: 80 percent of people is nowhere near 80 percent of the sea and reef you will actually travel across. bmobile, the local arm of the bmobile-vodafone group that also operates in Papua New Guinea, is the challenger. It is competitive in Honiara, it runs the SIM counter in the arrivals hall at Honiara International, and it is the network Nomad's eSIM connects to. Its footprint outside the capital and the larger provincial towns is thinner than Our Telekom's, which is the single most important thing to know if you are heading to a province.
4G yes, 5G no
Our Telekom switched on LTE in Honiara in November 2017 on Band 28 at 700 MHz and Band 3 at 1800 MHz, and has extended it to provincial hubs since. Both operators run 4G in the capital and travellers report it as genuinely usable there. There is no 5G anywhere in the country in 2026 and no near-term prospect of it. Outside Honiara and the provincial centres, 3G and 2G still carry a lot of the traffic, so a phone that has quietly dropped to EDGE somewhere off Nggela is behaving normally rather than failing.
The backhaul story explains the shape of the coverage. The Coral Sea Cable System landed in Honiara and linked the country to Sydney by way of Papua New Guinea, and a domestic cable runs from Honiara west to Noro in the Western Province and north to Taro in Choiseul. Those landing points are why Honiara, Noro and a short list of provincial towns feel like a normal internet connection while an island forty minutes away by boat feels like 2009. Everything off the fibre depends on microwave links or satellite, and both degrade in the wet-season downpours that are a routine part of a Solomons trip.
One practical consequence of a duopoly this small: there is no meaningful wholesale market for an eSIM reseller to buy into. That is why a country with perfectly decent 4G in its capital produces the most expensive per-gigabyte travel eSIM on this entire site.
Coverage Across Solomon Islands
Coverage where travelers actually go:
| Area | Coverage | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Honiara | Good | Solid 4G along Mendana Avenue from Point Cruz through Chinatown to Ranadi on both networks, including at the Central Market. |
| Henderson and the airport road | Good | The 11 km run between Honiara International and town holds a usable signal, and so do the Bonegi shore-dive beaches west of the capital. |
| Gizo and Munda | Patchy | Both provincial capitals have 4G in and around the town itself. It thins within minutes of leaving the wharf by boat, which is every dive. |
| Marovo Lagoon and Uepi | Poor | Resort WiFi over a shared link is the realistic connection. Treat mobile data on the lagoon as an occasional surprise, not a plan. |
| Tulagi and the Nggela Islands | Variable | Signal comes and goes across Iron Bottom Sound and is generally gone once a boat is sitting over the wrecks mid-channel. |
| Malaita, Choiseul and Temotu | Poor | Our Telekom reaches Auki, Taro and a scattering of provincial stations. The rest of the outer provinces is effectively offline. |
How to Choose the Right Plan
Work backwards from where you sleep. If the whole trip is Honiara, the Bonegi beaches, the Vilu War Museum run west along the coast and the battlefield sites up behind town, either local network covers you and Our Telekom at around 55 SBD for 5 GB over seven days is the obvious buy. If you are flying on to Munda, Gizo or Marovo, take Our Telekom specifically, because it operates in all nine provinces and holds on longer past the wharf than bmobile does. Buy Nomad if you want a working phone in the arrivals hall and will pay a premium for that hour, if you land late and would rather not deal with a counter, or if your handset has no SIM tray at all. Anyone staying more than a couple of days should plan on doing both: the eSIM for landing, a local card the next morning. Whichever you pick, download offline maps and your dive briefings before you leave Honiara, because the Western Province will not do it for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it true that only Nomad sells a Solomon Islands eSIM?
Yes, and we checked it in both directions in August 2026. Nomad lists solomon-islands-eSIM in its own plans sitemap and the live product page sells 1 GB over seven days for USD 75. Airalo's country sitemap carries 216 entries and the Solomon Islands is not among them, while the direct URL returns a 404; Airalo does sell Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea, so the gap is a commercial decision rather than a hole in our list. Holafly's product sitemap carries 415 entries with no Solomon Islands page and its URL 404s too, although it sells Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and Papua New Guinea. If a comparison site tells you Airalo covers the Solomons, it is describing a global roaming pack, not a local plan.
Why does the eSIM cost 75 dollars when a local SIM costs seven?
Because there is no competitive wholesale market to buy into. An eSIM provider resells capacity it has negotiated from a local operator, and in a country of roughly 800,000 people spread across nine provinces there is very little of that capacity and no pressure on its price. Nomad is buying small volumes from bmobile at a rate set by a duopoly, and the retail price reflects it. The same effect shows up across the Pacific and in a handful of Central Asian and African markets. It is not a markup you can shop around, because nobody else is selling.
Will my data work at the dive sites?
Mostly not, and this is a thing to plan around rather than hope about. The Bonegi wrecks are a shore dive about twenty minutes west of Honiara and sit inside the capital's coverage, so those are fine. Almost everything else is not. The Toa Maru off Gizo, the Tulagi wrecks across Iron Bottom Sound, and the reef systems around Marovo Lagoon and Uepi all involve a boat leaving a town, and the signal leaves with the town. Resorts in the Western Province run their own WiFi over shared links and it is slow and often confined to the main building.
Do I have to register a local SIM with my passport?
Yes. The Telecommunications (Subscriber Registration) Directives 2023 created a National Subscriber Registry run by the Telecommunications Commission, and registration became mandatory from 1 June 2024. Both operators register you at the point of sale, and a visitor uses a passport. It takes a few minutes at a counter and every traveller in your group has to do their own line. Skipping that step is the one concrete thing Nomad's eSIM buys you for its 75 dollars.
How much data does a Solomons trip actually use?
Less than you would expect, because so much of the trip has no signal to spend it on. A week of Honiara plus dive days out of Gizo or Munda tends to run 2 to 4 GB for messaging, maps, email and the occasional call home, since the offline stretches on boats and at outer-island resorts do the rationing for you. That makes Nomad's single gigabyte a poor fit for anything beyond an arrival day, and it makes Our Telekom's 5 GB over seven days at around 55 SBD comfortably generous for about the price of a sandwich.
Can I use a regional Pacific plan instead?
Check the country list before you buy, because most of them exclude the Solomons. Airalo's Oceania pack covers eight countries and this is not one of them. Regional and global roaming products from other resellers sometimes do include the Solomon Islands, but they typically land on the same bmobile network at a similar or worse per-gigabyte rate. If you are island-hopping through Fiji or Vanuatu on the same trip, buy a regional plan for those legs and treat the Solomons as a separate problem solved by a local card in Honiara.