Internet in Belgium

ADSL first appeared in Belgium in 1999, named Turboline. The first network was set up by the incumbent Belgian telecom operator Belgacom and has been expanding ever since. In 2004 nearly 90% of the entire territory has access to ADSL from Belgacom. Belgacom's daughter company Skynet was the first officially supported ADSL provider, but now many more have gained popularity and almost all provide full triple play services (Television/Internet/Telephone).

Internet bandwidth and transfer limits in Belgium

Download speeds in Brussels are now reaching a good level, however, the majority of Belgians have bandwidth caps in place to limit the amount of data users can transfer through their connection. Typically these are between 5GB/month and 35GB/month and truly show that the competition in this market has not been strong enough to drive out these practices which have vanished in other western countries.

In June 2008 some belgian internet providers announce ( [http://life.tweakers.net/nieuws/53983/belgische-isp-dommel-schaft-datalimiet-voor-homeconnect-af.html Dommel] (dutch article), [http://blog.yabu.eu/200806/16/yabu-adsl-introduces-an-internet-connection-without-data-limit-with-a-national-availability-in-belgium/en/ Yabu ADSL] ) to offer nation wide available ADSL subscriptions without the datalimits.

ADSL/VSDL Internet Providers

Alongside the Belgacom ADSL network, several operators like Scarlet, Mobistar and Versatel have created a secondary network, based on local loop unbundling.

# [http://www.edpnet.be EDPnet] offers download rates from 6 up to 24 Mbit/s via ADSL/ADSL2+
# [http://www.belgacom.be Belgacom] - Up to 17Mbit/s
# [http://www.scarlet.be/ Scarlet] - Up to 20Mbit/s
# [http://www.yabu.be/ Yabu ADSL] - download rates from 4 up to 24Mbit/s

Cable Internet Providers

Belgium also has cable networks. The biggest one, started by Telenet in 1997, covers almost all of Flanders. Speeds vary from 25 Mbit/s to 512 kbit/s down.

Cablenet Internet providers

# [http://www.coditel.be Coditel] - Up to 30Mbit/s
# [http://www.voo.be Voo] - Up to 15Mbit/s
# [http://telenet.be Telenet] - Up to 25Mbit/s