DIGI is the fifth telecom provider to establish itself on the Belgian market. This became clear after the auction of 5G frequencies for our country. The company DIGI consists of the West Flemish telecom specialist Citymesh from Bruges and the Romanian provider Digi Communications. This is the first time in 20 years that a new player is entering this market in Belgium.
So far, the telecom providers Proximus, Telenet and Orange have split the mobile communications market in Belgium. In addition, there is the Walloon provider Network Research Belgium (NRB) from Liege, which does not deal with private consumers, but rather only with networks between companies, also called B2B, or business-to-business.
DIGI, on the other hand, will also enter the free market, i.e. submit consumer offers. Belgium’s Green Communications Minister Petra De Sutter (Groen) was pleased that a new player is pushing into the Belgian market and assumes that this new competition will promote competition in the telecom sector and that prices for the end consumer may eventually decrease. Belgium is one of the most expensive EU countries in terms of mobile communications and telecommunications.
The Belgian 5G licenses are auctioned
All telecom providers mentioned here have participated in the auction of the 5G licenses in Belgium and so all co-bidders have got a piece of this cake. The Belgian telecoms regulator BIPT announced that this auction will cost a total of 1.2 billion euros. I have earned €. This is far more than the expected € 800 million.
By the way, Citymesh is already active here, because the company from Bruges has been testing a 5G network at Brussels Airport in Zaventem (Flemish Brabant) since about 2020. Otherwise, the two DIGI components share their own market. Citymesh – the company belongs to the Cegeka computer science Group from Hasselt in the province of Limburg – will be aimed at the corporate market in the B2B sector and DIGI will be aimed at the market for private telecom users.
