As expected, DIGI is offering very competitive subscriptions for mobile telephony and fiber optic internet from the start. In both cases, you will pay significantly less than the rates applied by Proximus, Orange and Telenet.
It is with a little delay that DIGI announces its launch on the Belgian telecom market on December 11. The company wants to expand its own 5G network over the next five years and also offer fiber optics.
Mobile: 5 euros per month
The company had made it clear for quite some time that it wanted to cut prices and is now keeping its word: for five euros per month, you will get 15 GB of mobile internet, together with unlimited calls and SMS.
This offer will be accessible to everyone in Belgium. For the mobile network, DIGI currently still relies on the network of competitor Proximus. But in the coming years, the company will install more of its own transmission towers, where customers will automatically switch to the DIGI network.
15 euros per month for 1 Gbps
But the Belgian-Romanian operator also wants to be competitive in the fixed internet market. To this end, it offers three subscriptions in the DIGI Fiber package, even if they come with a solid footnote.
- DIGI Fiber Essentials – 500 Mbps download speed for 10 euros per month.
- DIGI Fiber Max – 1 Gbps download speed for 15 euros per month.
- DIGI Fiber Ultimate – 10 Gbps download speed for 20 euros per month.
With this pricing, DIGI is well below what Proximus, Telenet or Orange currently offer. At Mobile Vikings, one of Proximus’ low-cost brands, the customer now pays 55 euros per month for a 1 Gbps download connection. Even EDPnet, recently acquired by Citymesh, parent company of DIGI, charges 45.95 euros per month for such speed.
But this competitive offer will only be available on a very limited basis. DIGI Fiber is currently only accessible in the Kuregem district of Anderlecht, which covers around ten thousand homes.
National deployment?
The new telecom operator, however, has the ambition to deploy in other Belgian cities and towns, even if this will take some time. It wants to connect up to two million homes within five years, particularly in urban areas. Furthermore, DIGI claims to recommend a single network and maximum reuse of passive infrastructure with access to available pipes.
The first refers to a possible ambition to use the competition’s network (Proximus or the Telenet-Fluvius Wyre consortium), or at least to install its own optical fiber via these same pipes. This is crucial in order to offer a national fiber optic network at an affordable price. Otherwise, DIGI would be obliged, as a third party with its own fiber optic network, to open the streets throughout the country. This is a mega-investment which is currently increasing the expenses of a mature player like Proximus.
Discussions are currently underway between existing fiber optic players to jointly install a single connection in less populated areas, to save costs, works and disruption.
