Two things to settle before an Egypt trip, and neither is about how many gigabytes.
A Europe plan does not cover Egypt
Egypt is in North Africa, not Europe, and no Europe regional bundle includes it. If you are flying Cairo via Rome, the Europe plan in your phone stops working the moment you land in Egypt.
The same goes the other way: an Egypt plan does not cover a stopover in Athens or Istanbul. Check each country on your route against the coverage list of whatever you buy, including the one you change planes in if you intend to leave the airport.
If your itinerary is Egypt plus Jordan or the Gulf, look for a Middle East regional plan before buying two singles — but read its country list, because "Middle East" bundles vary a lot in whether Egypt is in them.
Internet calling may not work, and we cannot promise it will
Internet voice and video calling has at times been restricted on Egyptian networks. Whether WhatsApp, FaceTime or Messenger calling works for you on a given day depends on the operator's routing, not on us, and it can change without notice.
So: do not build your trip around a calling app. Text messaging on those apps has generally been the reliable part. If you need to make real voice calls home, assume you may have to use hotel Wi-Fi or an actual phone line, and tell people at home that voice may be hard.
We would rather say that plainly than sell you a plan on a promise we do not control.
Where coverage drops
Orange, Vodafone Egypt, Etisalat and WE all cover the Nile valley and the big cities. Egypt is otherwise mostly desert, and coverage follows population.
- Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Luxor, Aswan: good, including at the Pyramids plateau and the main temple sites.
- On a Nile cruise: signal comes and goes. You pass towns and get a connection; you pass thirty kilometres of fields and you do not. Boat Wi-Fi exists on most cruisers and is usually slow.
- Abu Simbel road and the Western Desert — Bahariya, Siwa, the White Desert: long empty stretches, and in the deep desert nothing at all. Do not go into the Western Desert relying on a phone.
- Sinai: Sharm and Dahab are covered; the interior mountain routes and the climb up Mount Sinai are not.
- Red Sea dive boats: signal near shore, nothing on an offshore day trip.
Offline maps before you leave Cairo, and a saved screenshot of your hotel's address written the way a local driver reads it, with a dropped pin beside it — something you can hold up when nothing will load.
How much data
- Ordinary sightseeing, maps, messaging, a translation app: 2 GB a day.
- Several cities, lots of maps and a lot of photos being sent home: 3 GB a day.
- Tethering a laptop or working remotely: 5 GB a day or more.
Hotel Wi-Fi is universal in Egyptian tourist hotels but often slow at peak hours, so budget for using your own data in the room. Where a plan slows after its high-speed allowance, maps and messaging stay usable while video gets painful — buy enough that you do not reach that point.
No Egyptian number
Data only, no Egyptian line. Where that matters:
- Drivers, guides and hotels call you. Without a local number, they cannot. Agree a WhatsApp thread in advance and keep it, or give the hotel's front desk as the contact number.
- Ride-hailing apps work over data on your existing account, which is the easiest way to avoid the taxi-fare argument entirely.
- Keep your home SIM switched on for bank SMS codes, with its cellular data off so it cannot roam and bill you.