The closest competitor: Mega Glow at €7 per month (150 call minutes, 1000 SMS, 5GB of data). As a reminder, the energy supplier Mega is diversifying its activities and using the Orange network to distribute its own mobile subscriptions.
The Proximus 4G network as an emergency crutch
What about the DIGI Belgium mobile network?
Deploying your own network is a long-term task. While waiting to achieve 100% coverage of the territory, DIGI Belgium relies on the Proximus mobile network where there are holes in its racket. The two companies have signed a five-year contract in this sense, what is called a roaming contract.
Another specificity of this roaming contract: limited access to 4G from Proximus. For 5G, we will have to wait until DIGI Belgium begins to activate its own antenna and pylon sites in 2025.
4000 to 5000 sites (antennas, pylons) are required to build its mobile network. The contract also provides that DIGI Belgium can recover 400 sites that Proximus no longer needs.
Once fully operational, DIGI’s mobile network will be the fourth in Belgium, after those of Proximus, Orange Belgium and Base/Telenet.
Optical fiber from €10 per month
As is the case in Romania, Italy, Spain and recently in Portugal, DIGI’s ambitions go beyond mobile. The other major service: Internet via optical fiber, the availability of which is initially limited to the Brussels municipalities in the heart of which the operator’s teams have deployed cables and boxes on the facades, even if it means triggering controversy after controversy.
DIGI Belgium is banking on three fiber optic subscriptions:
- DIGI Fiber Essentials, speed of 500 Mbps (download, upload), €10 per month.
- DIGI Fiber Max, speed of 1 Gbps (download, upload), €15 per month.
- DIGI Fiber Ultimate, speed of 10 Gbps (download, upload), €20 per month.
Installation is free, based on a Wi-Fi 6 modem. The landline telephone is a complementary option to fiber, at €2.5 per month.
2 million homes connected within five years
Among the closest competitors, we find Mobile Vikings, the subsidiary of Proximus. Conditions for its Fast Internet via fiber: 150 Mbps download, 50 Mbps upload, €40 per month.
DIGI Belgium plans to deploy fiber in other large Belgian cities, with a target of 2 million homes connected within five years.
TV in the next phase
The digital television service DIGI TV is not yet ready for commercial launch. It will soon be available via the DIGI TV box, the DIGI TV app on smart TVs, tablets and smartphones.
Who is DIGI Belgium, the fourth mobile operator in Belgium?
The telecoms operator DIGI Belgium is a joint venture founded by the Romanian group DIGI Communications and the Belgian company Citymesh. Its priority mission: to exploit the mobile frequencies acquired at auction in 2022 by Citymesh Mobile SA, for €114 million. At the heart of these licenses valid for 20 years: frequencies usable “both for 5G and for 2G, 3G and 4G applications”, says the Belgian Institute of Postal Services and Telecommunications (IBPT).
At the time of these auctions, which brought in €1.2 billion in revenue for the Belgian state, it was a political desire to open the door to a fourth mobile operator, called upon to compete with the only three owners of a mobile network in Belgium (Proximus, Orange Belgium, Base/Telenet).
This is why DIGI Belgium is presented as the fourth mobile operator in Belgium.
