Proximus (formerly known as Belgacom Mobile) is the largest of

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

's three mobile telecommunications companies and is a part of Proximus Group (previously Belgacom Group). It competes with

Orange Belgium Orange Belgium (known as Orange) is a Belgian telecommunications company. It competes with Proximus and Base. It also operates internet and mobile services in Luxembourg through its local subsidiary, Orange Luxembourg, following the acquisition ...

and Base.

History

Proximus was founded in 1994 as a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between Belgacom, 75%, and

AirTouch AirTouch Communications, Inc. was an American Mobile phone, wireless telephone service provider, created as a Corporate spin-off, spin-off of Pacific Telesis on April 1, 1994. Its headquarters were located in the One California building in the F ...

, 25%, respectively. AirTouch was later merged with

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...

. In 2006, Belgacom bought the remaining

shares. Starting January 1994, Proximus took over the operatorship of the old MOB2 analogue network, as well as the new second generation GSM network, originally only in the GSM 900 range. The obsolete MOB2 network was retired in 1999. When necessary, Proximus can also use GSM 1800 to complement its network. It was originally a de facto monopoly, but after deregulation Mobistar (now

), a second GSM 900 operator soon joined the game in 1998, followed by BASE then known as

KPN Koninklijke KPN N.V. (Royal KPN N.V. in English), trading as KPN is a Dutch List of telephone operating companies, telecommunications company. KPN originated from a government-run postal, telegraph and telephone service and is based in Rotterda ...

Orange UK Orange UK was a mobile network operator and internet service provider in the United Kingdom, launched in 1994. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but was purchased by France Télécom (now Orange S.A.) in 2000, which then adopted ...

in 1999. Proximus has just a little over 45% of the market, which is now considered as saturated. In 2014 Belgacom included its Pay-TV business under the Proximus brand name which then would include its landline and mobile telephone services as well as all of its broadband services.

Company

Proximus mobile was a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

of Belgacom, which had an IPO in 2004 but remains more than 50% state owned. A 25% share was owned by the Vodafone Group until 2006, when Vodafone agreed to sell its stake to Belgacom. In 2004, it had a revenue of €2,239 million and an

EBITDA A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, state-mandat ...

of €1,135 million. In 2014, Belgacom was rebranded to Proximus, under the leadership of Dominique Leroy. As of January 2015, Belgacom continued partnership with Vodafone, even after sold to Belgacom. Proximus mobile is now fully integrated in the Proximus Group and is no longer a subsidiary. Proximus uses the brand name Tango in Luxembourg.

Technical information

The operator's display logo is PROXIMUS (sometimes displayed as BEL PROXIMUS or Proximus), the net code is 206 01 and operates under

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

900/1800 MHz,

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technolog ...

900/2100 MHz and LTE 1800 MHz frequencies. Its prepaid service is called Pay&Go.

Mobile virtual network operator

The Proximus network is used by a number of

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 such as TMF Mobile ( MTV Networks Benelux), Mobisud, RSCA Mobile, Dommel and PostMobile ( bpost).

References

External links

* {{Authority control Internet service providers of Belgium Mobile phone companies of Belgium Proximus Group Belgian brands Telecommunications companies established in 1994