Communications in Belgium are extensive and advanced.

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

possesses the infrastructure for both mobile and land-based telecom, as well as having significant television, radio and internet infrastructure. The

country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

for Belgium is BE.

Services

Mail

Mail regulation is a national competency. Postal service in

is in many cases performed by

Belgian Post Group Bpost (stylised ''bpost'') also known as the Belgian Post Group, is the Belgian company responsible for the delivery of national and international mail. The Belgian Post Group is one of the largest civilian employers in Belgium. It provides a ...

, a semi-private public company. Competitors include

DHL DHL is an American founded, German logistics company providing courier, package delivery and express mail service, which is a division of the German logistics firm Deutsche Post. The company group delivers over 1.8 billion parcels per year. ...

and UPS. Postal codes in Belgium consist of four digits which indicate regional areas, e.g. "9000" is the postal code for

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded i ...

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

for Belgium is 32 and the international call prefix is 00. A

telephone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

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 Closed may refer to: Mathematics * Closure (mathematics), a set, along with operations, for which applying those operations on members always results in a member of the set * Closed set, a set which contains all its limit points * Closed interval, ...

telephone numbering plan A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, re ...

, but retains the trunk code, "0", for all national dialling.

Fixed telephones

There were 4.668 million land

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

lines in use in

in 2007, a slight decrease on the 4.769 million in use in 1997. The majority state-owned public

telephone company A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunicat ...

of Belgium is

Proximus Proximus (stylised as pro⌘imus; formerly known as Belgacom Mobile) is the largest of Belgium's three mobile telecommunications companies and is a part of Proximus Group (previously Belgacom Group). It competes with Orange Belgium and Base. ...

. Some other or private operators exist, as Scarlet (

) and Base ( KPN).

Mobile telephones

Mobile telephone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while ...

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 operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sel ...

s (MNO) in Belgium,

( Belgacom), Orange Belgium ( Orange S.A.) and Telenet/ Base and numerous

mobile virtual network operator A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobil ...

s (MVNO). A fourth license will be auctioned off by the government in January 2010.

Internet

There were 61 (2003)

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...

s in Belgium, serving 8.113 million internet users in 2009. The country code for Belgian websites is

.be .be is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belgium. As of November 2022 there are 1,746,459 registered domains. History The domain became active in 1989 and was administrated by Pierre Verbaeten of the Katholieke Universiteit ...

. In September 2009 in Flanders there were 3,048,260 broadband internet customers (DSL and cable), 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: * Altercom *End service 2011 * Base *

Destiny Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. Fate Although often ...

* Digiweb * EDPnet * Evonet * Full Telecom *

Interxion Interxion is a European provider of carrier and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services. Founded in 1998 in the Netherlands, the firm was publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange from 28 January 2011 until its acquisition by Dig ...

* iPFix * LCL *

Mobistar Orange Belgium (known as Orange) is a Belgian telecommunications company. It competes with Proximus and Base. It was incorporated by France Télécom in 1996 under the name of Mobistar. The company re-branded as Orange on 9 May 2016 (followi ...

( Orange S.A.) *End service : 2013 *

Numericable Numericable was a major French cable operator and telecommunications services company. Numericable was originally created in 2007 from the merger between former competitors Noos and NC Numericable networks. Numericable Group SA was founded in Aug ...

( France Numericable) * Perceval * Portima * Proximedia Group * Scarlet ( Belgacom) * Verizon Business (

Verizon Communications Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

) * Ergatel Only Belgacom and Numericable currently offers fixed telephony and

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...

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: * Numéricable for the Brussels region ( Ypso Holding) * Telenet for the Flanders and Brussels regions (

Liberty Global Liberty Global plc is a British-Dutch-American multinational telecommunications company with headquarters in London, Amsterdam and Denver. Its respective legal names are Liberty Global Plc, Liberty Global B.V. and Liberty Global, Inc., with ...

) * VOO for the Walloon and Brussels regions ( TECTEO) * Orange Belgium use Telenet and VOO network combined These companies all offer fixed telephony and

in a triple play formula. * Interoute Managed Services *

* LCL *

Nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: * Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...

* Verizon Business (

) These companies all offer specialised services.

=Terrestrial Internet Providers

= * Clearwire in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Leuven Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic c ...

, Aalst,

Halle Halle may refer to: Places Germany * Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt ** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt ** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany ** Hal ...

and

Vilvoorde Vilvoorde (, french: Vilvorde ; historically known as ''Filford'' in English) is a Belgian municipality in the Flemish province of Flemish Brabant. The municipality comprises the city of Vilvoorde proper with its two outlying quarters of Koningslo ...

( Sprint Nextel) * Perceval

=Satellite Internet Providers

= * Verizon Business (

)

=ISP for public services

= * The Brussels Regional Informatics Center (BRIC, Centre d'Informatique pour la Région Bruxelloise in French) offers Internet access to public administrations in the

Brussels-Capital Region Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, relying directly on the national

Belnet Belnet (the Belgian National research and education network) is a Belgian internet provider for educational institutions, research centres, scientific institutes and government services. Since 1993, BELNET provides web services to higher educati ...

network and the IRISnet network.http://www.irisnet.eu/en?set_language=en regional

=Not categorized

= Other ISP are Chat.be, Connexeon, HostIT, Microsoft Belgium,

Netlog Netlog (formerly known as Facebox and Bingbox) was a Belgian social networking service targeted at the global youth demographic. On Netlog, members could create their own web page, meet new people, chat, play games, share videos and post blogs. T ...

, 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 Intelsat S.A. (formerly INTEL-SAT, INTELSAT, Intelsat) is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States. Originally formed as I ...

, and one

Eutelsat Eutelsat S.A. is a French satellite operator. Providing coverage over the entire European continent, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas, it is the world's third-largest satellite operator in terms of revenues. Eutelsat's satellite ...

References

External links

BIPT - Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications

ISPA - Internet Service Providers Association of Belgium

DNS - Domain Name System Belgium

MAVISE - Belgian TV market

Agoria - Federation of Belgian IT Employers

Beltug - Federation of Belgian ICT Professionals

UPP - Union of Belgian Periodical Press Publishers

Febelma - Belgian Federation of Magazines

VRM - Flemish Media Regulator
(Dutch community)
CSA - High Council for the Audiovisual Media
(French community)
MDGB - Germanic Media Council of Belgium
(Germanic community) {{DEFAULTSORT:Telecommunications In Belgium