Belgium has well-developed Internet infrastructure, ranking among the top countries in the world in terms of total number of Internet users, fixed broadband users, mobile broadband users, and Internet hosts. Providers typically offer download speeds of 30Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s, and upload speeds of 10Mbit/s to 75Mbit/s. Historically, Belgian Internet providers have imposed data caps on their subscribers, but lately this practice has been disappearing as Belgian Internet infrastructure has expanded.
Law enforcement in Belgium does take action against crimes committed on the Internet and filters websites hosting content that is illegal under Belgian law. Individual freedom of expression online is typically not violated by the government unless the expression could be classified as holocaust denial or incitement to hatred.
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 had 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).[citation needed]
Alongside the Belgacom ADSL network, several operators including Scarlet, Mobistar and Versatel have created a secondary network, based on local loop unbundling.[citation needed]
In 2009 the competitors of Belgacom started to offer VDSL2 connections instead of ADSL2+.[citation needed]
Belgacom, rebranded into Proximus in 2014, is the only owner of historical telephone networks, available to households, in Belgium. Other providers use Proximus's infrastructure as well.
Belgium also has cable networks. The biggest one, taken over by Telenet in 1997, covers almost all of Flanders. Speeds vary from 100 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s down. [12]
As of June 2020, 93% of Telenet's nodes support Gigabit speeds. If Gigabit speeds are not available on a customer's node, the second fastest speed Telenet offers for residential plans, is 400 Mbit/s.
Even with Gigabit download speeds, upload speeds are limited to 'only' 40 Mbit/s for residential plans. It is believed Telenet will not increase their upload speed, because DSL can not exceed 40 Mbit/s upload due to hardware restrictions, until Proximus rolls out supervectoring. This means that for most households, 40 Mbit/s upload is the maximum they can get. Only providers using fiber and LTE networks offer faster uploads, but home internet over LTE is nowhere near as popular (yet), and FttH networks are still pretty new in Belgium and not widely available.
As of 2020, Telenet and VOO are the only owners of coaxial networks (originally built for transferring radio and TV signals). Other providers use their infrastructure as well.
Download speeds in Brussels are now reaching a good level,[when?] 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 1000GB/month and show that the competition in this market has not been strong enough to drive out these practices which have vanished in other western and eastern European countries.[according to whom?]
In June 2008 the Belgian Internet providers Dommel[15] and Yabu ADSL announced nationwide ADSL subscriptions without the data limits.
In February 2010 the major operators of Belgium, including Telenet and Belgacom, announced tariffs with unlimited caps, but still with FUP formulas (fair usage policy).[16][17] However, some of them have adapted the FUP so it only counts on specific hours of the day.[18]
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Further information: IPv6 deployment § Belgium |
In 2014, Belgium has the world's highest adoption rate of IPv6 connectivity.[19][20]
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Further information: Websites blocked in Belgium |
There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms without appropriate legal authority. Individuals and groups engage in the expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail. The Belgian constitution and law provide for freedom of speech, including for members of the press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press. The constitution and legal code prohibit arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government generally respects these prohibitions in practice.[23]
Subject to warrants requested by the prosecutor all Belgian Internet providers have been filtering several websites at the DNS level since April 2009. This may be done when the websites are engaged in illegal activities or when they display information that is "contrary to public order or morality".[24] People who browse the Internet using one of these providers and hit a blocked website are redirected to a page that claims that the content of the website is illegal under Belgian law and therefore blocked. In contrast to other countries, the Web sites were filtered not because of displaying pornographic content but in order to guarantee the privacy rights of suspects or criminals who committed sexual offenses against children and whose identity was accordingly revealed in the targeted Web sites.[21]
Holocaust denial and incitement to hatred are criminal offenses punishable by a minimum of eight days (for Holocaust denial) and one month (incitement to hatred) up to one-year in prison and fines, plus a possible revocation of the right to vote or run for public office.[23]