I moved to Belgium some months ago and, as a result, I needed to take a new Internet access subscription. In the past, I complained a lot about the prices and lack of openness of the Luxembourg broadband market. Much to my surprise, the situation is worse in Belgium. Actually, not much has changed in the landscape over the last ten years, when I moved from Belgium to Luxembourg. The incumbent is still everywhere and keeps the market as closed as possible and the regulator seems quite toothless.
While the incumbent telecom operator, Belgacom, trumpets everywhere that it is at the forefront of fast Internet access, here’s what my ADSL modem actually shows:
Yes, you read well: 928 Kbit/s download speed, instead of the 4Mbit/s the operator offers. This was on a rainy day. On dry days, my speed increases to a whopping 1.5 Mbit, but still only 40% of the promised speed. I am 2.8 kilometers away from the local exchange, according to my ISP. Hence I should get better performance. The fact the speed varies according to weather conditions suggests to me that the cabling in the street ducts is not waterproof.
Actually, my ISP is not Belgacom. However, most ISPs use the Turboline ADSL infrastructure, which belongs to the incumbent, and just buy bit rate access from it. And the copper pairs belong to Belgacom, of course. I have now filed a ticket with my ISP to ask Belgacom to fix their line. Wait and see. I do not have much hope, though, and I think I will have to ultimately move to cable TV Internet instead. Too bad, because my ISP, Dommel, is one of the best in Belgium, offering generous monthly quotas (much to my astonishment, they still exist in Belgium) and no port blocking at all ( but, alas, no support for IPv6).
The other week, I called Belgacom about their Belgacom TV IPTV service. When I pointed out the lack of bandwidth, I was informed they could upgrade me to new VDSL2 service, but only if I subscribed to their IPTV service. In the meantime, Belgacom does all it can to prevent competitors to offer services on its VDSL2 network, although this was mandated by the regulator, IBPT. A clear case of abuse of dominant power.
It is also well known that the incumbent does not invest much in the Southern part of Belgium, preferring instead to focus on areas where it has strong competition, namely Flanders, where the cable TV operator, Telenet, is taking large chunks of the residential market by offering triple play services. Let us hope that the now unified Wallonia cable TV network, Voo, also offering triple play, will bring more competition and hopefully better prices and services.
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