The Colombian Internet Lottery: Medellin's Fiber vs Cartagena's Prayers

The Speedtest app showed 150 Mbps download, 120 Mbps upload from my apartment in El Poblado. Forty-eight hours later, I was sitting in a cafe in Cartagena’s Old City watching the same app spin for forty-five seconds before reporting 3.1 Mbps — and even that felt optimistic given how often the page failed to load. Same country. Same carrier. Completely different reality.

Colombia’s internet is a lottery, and your prize depends almost entirely on where you land. Medellin has quietly built one of Latin America’s most impressive urban fiber networks. Cartagena has 500-year-old stone walls and a WiFi router fighting both physics and humidity at the same time. This guide covers both sides of the ticket — what makes Medellin earn its reputation as a nomad capital, why Cartagena struggles despite being one of South America’s most beautiful cities, and everything you need to know about staying connected across Colombia.

Colombia Internet at a Glance

Detail	Info
Average Download Speed (Medellin)	80-150 Mbps (fiber areas)
Average Download Speed (Cartagena)	5-30 Mbps (highly variable)
Average Download Speed (Bogota)	80-200 Mbps
Primary Carrier	Claro (widest coverage)
4G/LTE Coverage	90%+ of urban areas, patchy in rural/coastal zones
5G Status	Expanding in Bogota and Medellin (Claro, Movistar)
eSIM Support	Yes — Saily, Airalo, Holafly all cover Colombia
Local SIM Cost	5,000-10,000 COP ($1.25-2.50) starter; data from ~$6/month
VPN Needed?	No (no censorship); recommended for public WiFi security
Internet Censorship	None — open internet
Best City for Nomads	Medellin (El Poblado, Laureles)
Digital Nomad Score	8/10 (Medellin)

Best eSIM Options for Colombia

Before you land, get an eSIM set up. You’ll clear immigration, grab your bag, and walk out with data already working — no standing in carrier queues, no hunting for a SIM shop in an unfamiliar airport. All three of the providers below have solid coverage in Medellin and Bogota, and workable coverage in coastal cities like Cartagena and Santa Marta.

Saily — Best Overall for Colombia

Saily runs on Claro’s network in Colombia and offers the best balance of price and coverage for most travelers. Plans start at $4.99 for 1GB/7 days and scale up to $23.99 for 10GB/30 days. In Medellin, Saily connected quickly and delivered consistent speeds — we averaged 38 Mbps on 4G LTE while walking around El Poblado, and 55 Mbps tethered to a laptop at Tinkko coworking. In Cartagena’s Bocagrande, performance was still solid at 25-30 Mbps.

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Airalo — Best for Multi-Country South America Trips

If Colombia is one stop on a longer South America itinerary, Airalo gives you the option to buy regional eSIMs that cover multiple countries on a single plan. Their Colombia-specific eSIMs price comparably to Saily and connect through either Claro or Movistar depending on location — useful since Movistar sometimes has an edge in certain Bogota neighborhoods.

Get Airalo Colombia eSIM

Holafly — Best for Unlimited Data

Holafly is the right choice if you plan to tether your laptop heavily, stream video, or join multiple video calls while relying on mobile data. Their unlimited Colombia plans start around $27 for 7 days — significantly more than capped alternatives, but the math works if you’re spending a week in a coastal city where fixed WiFi is unreliable and cellular is your primary connection.

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For a full breakdown of South American eSIM options, see our Best eSIM for South America guide.

The Medellin Miracle: Why Medellin Internet Speed Leads Latin America

The 150 Mbps I clocked that first morning in El Poblado was not a fluke. Medellin internet speed is genuinely exceptional for a Latin American city, and understanding why reveals something important about how a city can transform itself through infrastructure investment.

EPM and the Fiber Revolution

EPM — Empresas Públicas de Medellín — is Medellin’s municipal utility company, and it operates differently from most Latin American telecoms. As a public utility, profits flow back into city infrastructure rather than to distant shareholders. Over the past decade, EPM invested heavily in fiber optic expansion across the Aburrá Valley. The result is that fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure exists across most of El Poblado, Laureles, El Centro, and surrounding neighborhoods at prices that make North American cable companies look embarrassing by comparison.

A typical apartment fiber plan in Medellin runs 60,000-120,000 COP per month ($15-30) for 100-300 Mbps symmetrical service. That’s not a promotional rate. That’s the standard pricing. When I asked my Airbnb host in Laureles about her internet bill, she showed me a receipt for 89,000 COP — roughly $22 — for 200 Mbps fiber. The WiFi in that apartment hit 180 Mbps on my first Speedtest.

Tigo, Colombia’s other major ISP, has aggressively deployed its own fiber network in Medellin, creating healthy competition that keeps prices low and service quality high. The combination of EPM fiber and Tigo fiber means that the vast majority of mid-range and above accommodations in the city’s nomad neighborhoods have genuinely fast, stable connectivity.

El Poblado: The Nomad Ground Zero

El Poblado is where most digital nomads land first, and the connectivity infrastructure reflects the neighborhood’s decade-long evolution into a full-service remote work destination. The Provenza area — the pedestrianized heart of El Poblado with its cafes, restaurants, and rooftop bars — has WiFi competition between venues so intense that most places now advertise their speeds on sidewalk boards.

Walking around Provenza one afternoon, I tested speeds at six consecutive cafes. The lowest reading was 42 Mbps. The highest was 118 Mbps at a place called Pergamino — a specialty coffee roaster that has become something of a pilgrimage site for coffee-and-laptop nomads. Their internet is almost suspiciously good for a cafe.

Accommodation in El Poblado varies, but anything that markets itself to digital nomads or is priced above budget level will almost certainly have fiber. I tested a dozen Airbnb listings before my stay: every host I asked gave me a speed screenshot ranging from 80-220 Mbps. The few that didn’t respond to my internet question were the ones I avoided.

Laureles: The Locals’ Nomad Neighborhood

Laureles is what happens when El Poblado’s prices climb high enough to push practical long-term nomads into seeking alternatives. It’s a quieter, more residential neighborhood about 20 minutes west of El Poblado by metro — and it has equally good connectivity at meaningfully lower prices.

The Circular area in Laureles, centered around the tree-lined Avenida El Poblado and its cross streets, has become a genuine nomad alternative. Cafes here offer solid WiFi without the crowds of Provenza. Apartments rent for 15-30% less than comparable El Poblado units. And the internet speeds? In three weeks of testing across Laureles cafes, apartments, and coworking spaces, I averaged 94 Mbps — essentially identical to what I saw in El Poblado.

Medellin’s Coworking Scene

Medellin’s coworking infrastructure has matured significantly. These are the spaces worth knowing:

Tinkko — With multiple locations across the city (El Poblado, Laureles, El Centro), Tinkko is the go-to name for most nomads. The El Poblado location on Calle 10 has reliable fiber hitting 80-120 Mbps, air conditioning, phone booths for calls, and a community of regulars who actually want to meet other nomads. Day pass: 60,000 COP ($15). Monthly: 500,000 COP ($125).

WeWork Medellin — Located in El Centro near Parque Berrío, WeWork brings its standard playbook: fast, consistent internet (100-150 Mbps), private meeting rooms, professional environment. Pricier than local alternatives but the infrastructure reliability is highest here. Day pass: 80,000 COP ($20). Monthly: from 700,000 COP ($175).

Selina El Poblado — Part of the global Selina network, this co-living/coworking hybrid has good WiFi (50-80 Mbps), a rooftop pool, and organized social events. The community tends younger and more transient than Tinkko, but the vibe is lively. Day pass: 60,000 COP ($15). Monthly packages available for guests.

Pergamino Café (El Poblado and Laureles) — Not a coworking space in the traditional sense, but so popular with laptop workers that it functions as one. The coffee is extraordinary — they roast their own — and the WiFi consistently hits 80-120 Mbps. No day pass required. Just buy coffee and a pastry. This is where I wrote most of this article.

Céntrico — A newer addition to Laureles with a more local, less expat-tourist feel. 60-90 Mbps WiFi, excellent natural light, and significantly cheaper coffee than the El Poblado equivalent spots. Day pass: 50,000 COP ($12.50).

Cartagena: When Colonial Charm Becomes Connectivity Curse

Now for the other side of the ticket.

Arriving in Cartagena’s Old City after a week in Medellin is one of the most beautiful urban arrivals in South America. The colored colonial buildings, the bougainvillea spilling over thick stone walls, the cobblestone streets barely wide enough for a tuk-tuk — it’s genuinely stunning. It’s also, from an internet infrastructure perspective, a city built to defeat WiFi signals.

Those thick stone walls — some of them 2 to 4 meters of solid masonry — were designed to stop cannonballs. They stop 5GHz WiFi signals even more effectively. The narrow streets mean buildings sit close together and signal interference between competing routers is constant. The wiring inside most Old City properties was installed decades ago and was never designed for fiber optic connections. The result is that even a perfectly functional router pumping a 50 Mbps connection into a colonial-era building can deliver 8 Mbps at a table ten meters away.

I spent four days working from the Old City. The best cafe WiFi I found was 22 Mbps at a place on Calle Santo Domingo — and that was with the router mounted on the wall directly above my table. The apartment I rented, a beautiful two-story colonial property near Torre del Reloj, advertised WiFi. The speed in the courtyard: 14 Mbps. In the upstairs bedroom: 4 Mbps. Standing next to the router in the kitchen: 31 Mbps. I worked from the kitchen.

The Cartagena Neighborhood Divide

Not all of Cartagena suffers equally. The city breaks into distinct zones with dramatically different connectivity.

The Old City (Centro Histórico) is the problem zone. Everything described above applies here. If you are visiting for a few days and doing light browsing, it’s manageable. If you need reliable video calls or large file uploads, plan around this limitation.

Getsemaní, the slightly rougher neighborhood immediately outside the old city walls, is marginally better. Buildings are newer in some areas, wiring is less ancient, and there’s slightly more room for proper router placement. Cafes in Getsemaní hit 15-30 Mbps in our testing — an improvement, but still not reliable enough for demanding remote work.

Bocagrande, the modern beachside strip of high-rise hotels and apartment towers to the south, is a completely different experience. Built in the 20th century, with proper electrical infrastructure and buildings that don’t have 400-year-old stone walls, Bocagrande has connectivity that actually works. In modern apartments and hotels here, 50-80 Mbps is achievable. The five-star hotels (Hilton, Sofitel) have invested in proper enterprise WiFi systems. If you need to work from Cartagena, position yourself in Bocagrande.

Castillogrande (adjacent to Bocagrande) is similar — modern construction, reasonable fiber access, less tourist-saturated atmosphere than the main Bocagrande strip.

Cellular as Cartagena’s Salvation

The most reliable internet in the Old City doesn’t come through a wire. It comes through the air. Claro and Movistar LTE coverage in Cartagena is surprisingly solid, even inside the Old City. The cell towers don’t care about thick stone walls the way WiFi routers do — mobile signal penetrates the buildings adequately, and with a strong LTE connection, hotspotting from your phone at 20-40 Mbps is a practical working solution.

The workflow that saved my Cartagena week: get an eSIM with a generous data allowance (or local SIM with a large data package), use your phone as a hotspot for all serious work, and treat the venue WiFi as a bonus rather than a primary connection. This is exactly why having a reliable Colombia eSIM matters before you arrive — you want mobile data as your primary backup, not an afterthought.

The carriers to know in Cartagena: Claro has the broadest coverage across the city and coast. Movistar is competitive in urban Cartagena but falls off faster in outlying coastal areas. Tigo works in the city but has thinner coastal coverage.

Santa Marta and the Coastal Connectivity Problem

Cartagena is not an isolated case. The entire Colombian Caribbean coast has an infrastructure gap compared to the Andean cities. Santa Marta, Colombia’s oldest city and the gateway to Tayrona National Park, faces similar challenges — though the Old Town is smaller, less walled, and slightly more wired.

In central Santa Marta (around Parque de los Novios), cafe WiFi typically runs 15-35 Mbps — livable, if not impressive. In El Rodadero, the local beach resort area south of the city, connectivity is better in modern hotels and apartments, generally 40-60 Mbps. But the areas most travelers actually want to stay — around Taganga, Playa Blanca, and near Tayrona — are increasingly relying on mobile LTE as the primary data source, with fiber connectivity essentially absent.

Barranquilla, Colombia’s fourth-largest city and a major industrial port, has better infrastructure than the tourist coast — speeds in modern business districts hit 60-100 Mbps — but it’s rarely on the digital nomad circuit due to its lack of the lifestyle appeal that draws nomads to Medellin or Cartagena.

Bogota: The Overlooked Connectivity Champion

Here is a confession from someone who spent two weeks in Medellin before reluctantly flying to Bogota: I was wrong about Bogota.

Bogota has a reputation problem among digital nomads. It’s cold (2,600 meters altitude means sweaters in July), famously chaotic in terms of traffic, and lacks the photogenic charm of Medellin’s eternal spring or Cartagena’s colonial beauty. So nomads fly over it, landing in the sexy cities and ignoring the capital entirely.

That’s a mistake if connectivity is your priority. Bogota’s internet infrastructure is exceptional. Speeds in the modern residential and commercial zones — Chapinero, Usaquén, Zona Rosa, Salitre — routinely hit 100-200 Mbps in coworking spaces and modern apartments. The density of fiber optic deployment is highest in the country. And the coworking scene, while less Instagram-famous than Medellin’s, is enormous and professional.

Andres, the host of my Chapinero apartment, had a Claro fiber plan delivering 190 Mbps symmetrical service. His monthly bill: 95,000 COP. That’s $24. For 190 Mbps symmetrical fiber. Bogota doesn’t get enough credit.

If your primary use case is raw connectivity and you’re less concerned with outdoor lifestyle, climate, or access to beach culture, Bogota deserves serious consideration alongside Medellin.

VPN Recommendations for Colombia

Colombia does not censor its internet — there’s no Great Firewall equivalent, no Reddit blocks, no streaming restrictions based on political content. You will not need a VPN to access any major service in Colombia.

That said, there are still good reasons to run one. Colombia’s public WiFi networks — in cafes, coworking spaces, airports, and hotels — are subject to the same security concerns as public WiFi everywhere. A VPN encrypts your traffic on networks you don’t control, protecting banking credentials and sensitive work data from passive sniffing on shared networks.

The other use case: streaming libraries and banking. When you connect from a Colombian IP address, your home country Netflix shows a Colombian library (which may have different content), and some banking apps flag international login attempts. A VPN routes your traffic through a server in your home country, resolving both problems instantly.

Surfshark — Our Top Pick for Colombia

Surfshark is our recommended VPN for Colombia. It’s priced lower than NordVPN, allows unlimited simultaneous device connections (useful if you’re connecting a laptop, phone, and tablet), and performs well from both Medellin and Bogota. In our testing, connecting to Surfshark’s Miami or New York servers added only 10-18ms of latency from Medellin — negligible for any use case.

The unlimited device policy is particularly useful for nomads who carry multiple devices or share a subscription with a partner or travel companion.

Price: From $2.19/month on the 2-year plan.

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For a full comparison, read our Best VPN for Digital Nomads guide.

Local SIM Cards in Colombia

For stays longer than 2-3 weeks, buying a local SIM card at a Colombian carrier store is the most cost-effective connectivity option. Data is cheap, plans are flexible, and all four major carriers offer decent coverage in the cities where nomads actually spend time.

Carrier Breakdown

Claro is the clear first choice. It has the widest 4G LTE coverage across Colombia, including coastal cities and rural areas between Medellin and Cartagena. If you’re traveling across the country rather than staying in one city, Claro’s coverage advantage matters. Data packages: $6 for 10GB/30 days on the low end, up to $15 for 50GB/30 days.

Movistar is a solid second option in major cities. Pricing is competitive with Claro and network quality in Bogota and Medellin is essentially equal. Where Movistar falls short is rural and coastal coverage — it’s thinner than Claro outside urban centers.

Tigo offers competitive pricing and reliable urban coverage. Good choice if your movements stay within the major cities.

Wom is the newest major carrier, competing aggressively on price with plans that significantly undercut the established carriers. Coverage is thinner and more urban-focused, but in Medellin and Bogota specifically, Wom’s prices are hard to argue with. Worth considering for long stays in those specific cities.

Where to Buy

• El Dorado Airport (Bogota) or José María Córdova Airport (Medellin/Rionegro): All major carriers have counters. Slight markup over street prices, but the convenience of landing with a working local SIM is worth it.
• Carrier stores: Claro, Movistar, and Tigo all have retail locations throughout major cities. Staff will handle passport registration and SIM setup.
• Éxito and Jumbo supermarkets: Many sell prepaid SIM starters.

All carriers require passport registration. The process takes 10-15 minutes at a carrier store and is straightforward.

Practical Tips for Working Remotely from Colombia

In Medellin

• Test before committing. Even in El Poblado, individual apartments and cafes vary. Ask Airbnb hosts for a speed screenshot before booking. Most serious nomad-oriented hosts provide it unprompted.
• Use the metro. Medellin’s Metro system is clean, frequent, and covers the valley efficiently. El Poblado and Laureles are both metro-accessible, making it easy to split your time between neighborhoods.
• Carry a mobile hotspot backup. Even in Medellin, the occasional coworking router hiccup or apartment WiFi blip happens. An eSIM with a data plan on your phone means you can hotspot through any interruption without losing work momentum.
• Book meeting rooms at coworking spaces. The shared areas get noisy during peak hours (10 AM to 4 PM). If you have scheduled video calls, book a phone booth or meeting room. Tinkko and WeWork both have them.

In Cartagena

• Stay in Bocagrande or Castillogrande if you have serious connectivity needs. The Old City is for evenings and weekend exploration, not all-day work sessions.
• Treat your eSIM as the primary connection. Mobile LTE is more reliable in the Old City than fixed WiFi. Budget your data plan accordingly.
• Front-load heavy work. Schedule uploads, downloads, large video calls, and bandwidth-intensive tasks for Bocagrande or hotel lobbies with enterprise WiFi. Do lighter work (writing, emails, light browsing) from Old City cafes.
• Download everything offline. Cartagena is a perfect argument for having offline access to your critical docs, project files, and reference materials. Notion, Google Docs, and Dropbox all offer offline modes. Use them.

Health Insurance

Remote work in Colombia without health coverage is a risk not worth taking. Public hospitals in smaller cities can have long wait times, and private clinics in Medellin and Bogota are good — but expensive without insurance.

SafetyWing Nomad Insurance starts at $42/month and covers you across Colombia and 180+ other countries with no fixed end date. The subscription model — pay month to month, cancel when you head home — suits the flexibility of nomad travel. Coverage includes hospital stays, emergency evacuation, and COVID-19 treatment.

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The Honest Verdict on Colombia’s Internet Lottery

The gap between Medellin and Cartagena is not getting smaller — if anything, it’s likely to widen as Medellin continues to attract tech investment and international nomads who demand better infrastructure, while Cartagena’s Old City faces structural constraints that no amount of ISP investment can fully solve without tearing down 500-year-old walls.

That tension is what makes Colombia fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. The country that has built one of Latin America’s most sophisticated fiber networks in Medellin is also the country where a UNESCO World Heritage city center is essentially incompatible with 21st-century remote work demands.

My answer to the lottery: you don’t have to pick just one ticket. Spend your working weeks in Medellin — El Poblado or Laureles, with fast fiber and a thriving coworking scene and the city that feels, more than any other in South America, like it was designed for exactly this kind of life. Then spend your weekends in Cartagena — walking the walls at sunset, eating arepas de huevo from a street cart in Getsemaní, drinking rum in a Bocagrande hotel bar while the Caribbean turns orange. Put your laptop away. Use Cartagena the way it deserves to be used: as a place to live, not to work.

The Medellin internet speed lottery is one you win almost every time. Cartagena’s connectivity lottery is one where the jackpot is an unobstructed view of the ocean through a colonial archway — and sometimes, that’s worth more than 150 Mbps.

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Planning your Colombia trip? Get your eSIM sorted before you board:

Saily -- Colombia eSIM from $4.99 Airalo -- Colombia & South America Coverage Holafly -- Unlimited Colombia Data

For more on Colombia and the wider region, see our Colombia Internet Guide, Medellin Digital Nomad Guide, and Best Countries for Digital Nomads.