Belgian consumers usually pay quite a lot for telecom services compared to neighboring countries. “Belgium is almost systematically one of the three least cheap countries of the six that were examined,” says regulator BIPT in a study published Tuesday. This is probably due to the lack of competition.
The Belgian Institute of Postal Services and Telecommunications compared November 2021 rates in Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. A total of 359 tariff plans were compared. Belgium scores well in basic contracts for mobile services, ie products with a limited number of calling minutes and little data. “For the lightest pattern with 500 MB of data, our country comes out of the equation as the second cheapest country,” says BIPT. But as consumers want more calling minutes and/or data, Belgium generally becomes more expensive than neighboring countries.
Data and bundles on the expensive side
“The price difference with the cheapest countries (the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands) increases when the need for data exceeds 5 GB and from 50 GB in comparison with all countries,” says BIPT. “And also for bundles – a combination of internet, TV, fixed and/or mobile telephony services – our prices are generally high,” BIPT notes. Here again, the Belgian consumer pays more compared to neighboring countries as his needs increase.
Not so much high quality of telecom network
According to BIPT, the high prices cannot be explained so much by the high quality of the telecom network in Belgium, as is sometimes said. The reason lies rather in the lack of competition in our country compared to other countries. “The high prices for solid products are not apparently correlated with the quality and coverage of the Belgian networks. The degree of competition, on the other hand, seems to be a more pronounced explanatory element, as a strong correlation is found between the degree of competition and the price level,” it said. .
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and never miss a thing from the stars.