Telecommunications in Belgium


Communications in Belgium are extensive and advanced. Belgium possesses the infrastructure for both mobile and land-based telecom, as well as having significant television, radio and internet infrastructure. The country code for Belgium is BE.

Services

Mail

Mail regulation is a national competency. Postal service in Belgium is in many cases performed by Belgian Post Group, a semi-private public company. Competitors include DHL and UPS.
Postal codes in Belgium consist of four digits which indicate regional areas, e.g. "9000" is the postal code for Ghent.

Telephone

The telephone system itself is highly developed and technologically advanced, with full automation in facilities that handle domestic and international telecom. Domestically speaking, the county has a nationwide cellular telephone system and an extensive network of telephone cables. Telephone regulation is a national competency.
The country code for Belgium is 32 and the international call prefix is 00.
A telephone number in Belgium is a sequence of nine or ten numbers dialled on a telephone to make a call on the telephone network in Belgium. Belgium is under a closed telephone numbering plan, but retains the trunk code, "0", for all national dialling.

Fixed telephones

There were 4.668 million land telephone lines in use in Belgium in 2007, a slight decrease on the 4.769 million in use in 1997.
The majority state-owned public telephone company of Belgium is Proximus. Some other or private operators exist, as Scarlet and Base.

Mobile telephones

Mobile telephone ownership has increased by nearly one thousand percent in the period 1997–2007, from 974,494 to 10.23 million.
There are three licensed mobile network operators in Belgium, Proximus, Orange Belgium and Telenet/Base and numerous mobile virtual network operators.
A fourth license will be auctioned off by the government in January 2010.

Internet

There were 61 internet service providers in Belgium, serving 8.113 million internet users in 2009. The country code for Belgian websites is .be.
In September 2009 in Flanders there were 3,048,260 broadband internet customers, of which 2,520,481 were residential users and 527,779 business users. Only 65,175 dial-up internet access accounts remained in the residential market and 9,580 in the business market.

Internet providers

xDSL Internet Providers
Belgium has numerous copper cable internet providers:
Only Belgacom and Numericable currently offers fixed telephony and digital television in a triple play formula. All other companies offer also fixed telephony in a duo play formula.
Cable Internet Providers
Belgium has three major fiberglass cable internet providers:
These companies all offer fixed telephony and digital television in a triple play formula.
These companies all offer specialised services.
Terrestrial Internet Providers
Other ISP are Chat.be, Connexeon, HostIT, Microsoft Belgium, Netlog, Ulysse, Ven Brussels, Rack66 (EUSIP bvba), WSD Hosting.

Other

The microwave relay network is, however, more limited. For international communications, Belgium has 5 submarine cables and a number of satellite earth stations, two of which are Intelsat, and one Eutelsat.