Category Archives: Belgium

We need real paneuropean mobile operators

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 10 September 2008 None comments
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I got my mobile phone bill in the mail the other day and, again, I nearly got a heart attack.   It has been like this for over the last 10 years. Whatever I do, this bill is always way higher than expected.

I tried everything from switching operators to  spending hours figuring out the optimal subscription plan. I do not place calls from my mobile if I can avoid it, especially abroad. I avoid SMS when e-mail is possible. I do not even dare to use the data services, although I have a 3G phone.  Still no luck. The main issue is that I work in a small country, live in the country nearby and often go to a two other countries for shopping and leisure. I am roaming on other networks than my home one 75% of the time. While this may sound unusual, actually this is what the whole European Union construction is all about: abolish borders.

I decided last year to subcribe to Transatel, a MNVO (Mobile Network Virtual Operator). In short, they do not have a network on their own, but buy capacity from other operators. It looked attractive because they cover several countries. They give you a local phone number in each country you choose. This makes it cheaper for the people calling you.  I can receive calls on my Luxembourg number while in Belgium and no roaming charges will apply. Sort of. Because, actually, you only get a limited number of minutes each month for call transfers across countries. Once you have reached the threshold, you are billed for the call transfers. This is just roaming charges by another name. At the time of subscription, they promised my monthly bill would be 50% lower. It looks like my usage profile was not part of their statistical sample…

The European mobile market is very fragmented. Each country has 3 or 4 mobile operators. Even those self labelled paneuropean networks like Vodaphone or Orange are actually alliances of different national operators, loosely tied by a similar logo.  All the rest of their offerings is different: subscription plans, services, phone numbers and roaming charges.  As for roaming charges, I noticed on several occasions in the past that if your home network operator is a Vodaphone partner, it may sometimes be cheaper to select a non-Vodaphone network abroad.

Those alliances are another way to make the offers more opaque to better fool the customer. On the economics of the mobile market, there is this interesting post from Kurtis Linqvist (thanks to Patrik Fältström for the link) . Just like Kurtis, I agree that there is no such thing as free and open mobile markets  in Europe.  I, too, hope the European Commission will continue to regulate the market until such time that it will cost the same price to call a mobile in Stockholm from Madrid that it is to place call from Los Angeles to Washington.  At&T in the US has a subscription plan for unlimited voice calls throughout the US for USD99.99/month. Unfortunately, given the current market conditions, I do not see a similar paneuropean offer any time soon.

Flanders wants .vla

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 7 July 2008 1 comments
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I have blogged earlier about a, now aborted, attempt by a group of extreme right activists and independentists to get hold of a ccTLD for Belgian Flanders.

A new attempt, by Flemish parliament member Mark Demesmaeker,  is on its way. As Mr Demesmaeker observes in his question to the flemish government, Flanders cannot get .vl because they do not have an ISO-3166 two letter code, and won’t get one “until it gets independent and not earlier” (Vlaanderen zal .vl krijgen als het onafhankelijk wordt en niet eerder).

This is why he suggests asking for .vla instead. This time, rather than extremist groups, it is the Flemish government itself which will be pursuing the project.

There is still some common background to the failed proposal and the new one, as one extrem right parliament member observed. Both see this as a first step towards political independence, rather than as a way to build a cultural community, like .cat did.  Mr Demesmaeker makes it clear in other posts on his blog that he wants Flanders to be a Flemings-only club. It must be heartbreaking for those independentists to be relegated to just ask for a gTLD, rather than the ccTLD they think they deserve.

Letter to my ISP

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 1 June 2008 None comments
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I sent the following to my ISP today:

You may be aware that the available pool of IPv4 addresses will be exhausted in 3 years from now. Here are some links to more information.

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ipv6/docs/european_day/communication_final_27052008_en.pdf

http://www.ripe.net/news/community-statement.html (and similar announcements form other RIRs)

By way of this e-mail, I wish to formally ask you to make IPv6 support available to your customers.

We are often told that ISPs do not deploy IPv6 on  their network because there is no user demand, so I thought it may be useful to formally ask for it and inform you that I am willing to pay a small extra for a decent IPv6 service.

My own blog post on the subject is here:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/85288_european_commission_pushes_ipv6/

I do not expect any answer, but if it happened, I would post it here.

Update 2 june 10:21am:  The ISP has closed the ticket, without even bothering to reply. Obviously “raising awareness” is  not enough. One of these days, I will have to vote with my feet. The problem of course is that most other Belgian ISPs are even worse …

On est pas lumineux chez Luminus

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 28 March 2008 None comments
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Le ridicule ne tue plus, en tout cas pas chez mon fournisseur de gaz: Luminus. J’ai reçu de leur part reçu une facture de € 0,42 ! On aurait pu croire à un poisson d’avril, si ce n’était que le courrier est daté du 28 mars.
facture-luminus-small.jpg

Y-a-t-il quelqu’un chez Luminus qui pourrait prendre le temps de calculer combien coûte le traitement d’un paiement électronique pour l’entreprise, la banque et le client ?

L’opérateur historique contraint de proposer une offre ADSL2+ pour ses concurrents

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 26 March 2008 None comments
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Le régulateur belge de télécoms, l’IBPT, prévoit d’obliger l’opérateur historique à proposer une offre ADSL2+ sur son infrastructure pour les fournisseurs d’accès Internet qui l’utilisent (soit désormais 100% du marché aux particuliers).

J’ai donc adressé le courrier suivant au régulateur :

Monsieur,

Concerne: Projet de decision du conseil de l’IBPT du 12 mars 2008 concernant BROBA 2008 ADSL2+

En tant que consommateur, je ne puis que vous encourager à continuer dans la voie de cette décision.

Au vu des expériences dans les pays voisins, l’ADSL2+ représente une réelle opportunité pour les consommateurs d’obtenir une réelle concurrence, et par voie de conséquence de meilleurs prix et service. Les tarifs actuellement pratiqués en Belgique sont largement supérieurs à nos voisins. Voir notamment:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/doc/factsheets/13thimplementation/9-2-be.pdf

Il est important, d’un point de vue démocratique, qu’une gamme plus large d’utilisateurs aient la possibilité d’accéder à Internet. Le prix de l’abonnement est un des facteurs qui entre en ligne de compte.

Face à un opérateur qui a toujours du mal à renoncer à son monopole, il faut un régulateur déterminé. Et cela d’autant plus que Belgacom vient de mettre la main sur l’infrastructure de Scarlet, devenant donc, de facto, le seul opérateur d’infrastructure DSL en Belgique.

Avec mes plus sincères salutations.