Belgium

All three of Belgium's operators are neck-and-neck in the 4G Availability race. We saw another draw in this category — the third tie in a row — following our last two reports on the market six months and a year ago. In this report, Proximus and Orange scored a statistical draw with scores close to 90%, followed fairly closely by Telenet on 88.3%.

Proximus managed to pass the 90% 4G Availability mark — the first time we have seen a Belgian operator pass this milestone at a national level. And 4G Availability scores in the country continue to improve. Both Proximus and Telenet increased their scores by close to 4 percentage points in the past six months, while Orange has improved by over 2 points in our measurements. At this rate, we fully expect to see all three operators pass the 90% marker in our next report, meaning Belgium will join an elite group of countries for 4G Availability.

Proximus won our Video Experience award with a score of 71.9 (out-of-100), beating Telenet and Orange who scored 68.3 and 67.3 respectively. All three of Belgium's operators scores fell in our Very Good category, which generally means fast loading times and only occasional stalling. These scores elevate Belgium into a fairly exclusive group of countries where all operators have scored Very Good or higher in Video Experience analysis.

In our 4G Video Experience analysis, we observe that Proximus was followed closely by Telenet, with the two scoring 73.6 and 72.0 (out-of-100) respectively. We've also seen some notable improvements in Telenet's Video Stalling Occurrence and Video Load Time measurements — two of our supporting metrics that feed into our overall Video Experience scores — meaning we expect the operator to mount a serious challenge to Proximus' crown in our next report.

Our Download Speed Experience award was won by Proximus with an average score of 37.7 Mbps, beating Telenet's score of 35.3 Mbps, while Orange was a fairly distant third with a Download Speed Experience score of 28.8 Mbps. Proximus saw the greatest increase in its score of over 3 Mbps since our last report six months ago, Telenet's average speed grew by around 1 Mbps, while Orange's stayed fairly stagnant.

The race between Proximus and Telenet was closer in our 4G Download Speed supporting metric — in fact the two rivals scored a dead heat at 41.1 Mbps each. However Proximus was a clear 3 Mbps ahead of Telenet in our 3G Download Speed measurements, and this combined with Proximus' higher 4G Availability helped it win our overall Download Speed Experience award.

Proximus won our Upload Speed Experience award fairly comfortably, with a score over 14% faster than its rivals. The winning score of 13.4 Mbps was nearly 2 Mbps ahead of Orange and Telenet, who both scored averages of 11.5 Mbps in our Upload Speed Experience category.

Proximus was also ahead in our 4G Upload Speed supporting metric with a score of 14.7 Mbps, a clear 1 Mbps ahead of Telenet's 13.6 Mbps, while Orange scored 13.2 Mbps. However, not much has changed in the past six months, as all three of Belgium's operators have only seen incremental growth in our 4G Upload Speed measurements.

Our Latency Experience award went to Proximus, whose score of 31.5ms was over 12% better than Orange's score of 35.4ms. Latency measures the delay users experience as data makes a round trip through the network, meaning the lower the latency score, the better. Telenet was some way behind in Latency Experience with an average score of 41.0ms.

Proximus was also some way ahead of its rivals in our 4G Latency supporting metric, with a score of 29.1ms. However both Orange and Telenet's 4G Latency scores have worsened by at least 1ms over the past six months in our measurements, while Proximus' average score has stayed virtually static.