Belgium

It remains a very tight race in our 4G Availability analysis in Belgium. The award was again shared between two operators — but not the same ones as six months ago, thanks to a jump in Telenet's score. The operator increased its score by over 3 percentage points to pass the 90% milestone and force a draw for our national award with Proximus. Proximus also drew for first place in our last report, but with Orange — whose score has remained stagnant, seeing the France-based operator drop into third place in our 4G Availability table.

It's neck-and-neck in our Video Experience metric. Proximus has managed to keep hold of our award for the second report running, but hasn't seen any growth in its score in the last six months. Meanwhile, our users on both Orange and Telenet's networks saw their Video Experience scores improve by at least 1 point (on our scale of 0-100), meaning there are now less than 3 points separating all three of Belgium's operators.

All three of the operators' scores are in the Very Good (65-75) zone of our Video Experience rankings. This means our users experience video streamed to their devices with generally fast loading times and only occasional stalling, but the experience might become somewhat inconsistent at the highest resolutions. These high rankings come as little surprise, since the country appeared in the top ten in our recent global State of Mobile Network Experience report. Belgium remains in an elite group of countries where all operators score Very Good or above for Video Experience.

We saw a two-way tie in our Download Speed Experience metric, as Proximus was held to a draw by Telenet. But this tie was a result of a drop in Proximus’ users’ average speed rather than any growth in Telenet's score. Our users on Proximus' network saw their average Download Speed Experience drop by close to 3 Mbps, while neither Telenet nor Orange saw any significant change in their scores since our last report.

Proximus saw its download speed scores drop across the board, as our users suffered 4G Download Speeds falling by over 3 Mbps, while Proximus’ 3G Download Speed score dropped over 2 Mbps. Nonetheless, our users on Proximus' 4G network still enjoy average download speeds over 37 Mbps, while those on Telenet are getting speeds of over 41 Mbps. While these are not among the fastest download rates we have ever measured, they are very respectable, even in comparison with Belgium's mature European neighbours.

Proximus kept hold of our Upload Speed Experience award, with a winning score of 11.6 Mbps — over a megabit faster than its closest rival. Orange and Telenet saw a statistical tie for second place, both with scores around the 10 Mbps mark. Interestingly, in our supporting metrics, Proximus was fastest in our 4G Upload Speed measurements, while Telenet was marginally ahead of Orange. But our users on Orange were significantly ahead of this eon both rivals for 3G Upload Speed, resulting in a tie for second place in our overall Upload Speed Experience metric.

Our latency scores are all moving steadily in the right direction, as Proximus kept our Latency Experience award with a score of 30.7 milliseconds — tantalizingly close to the 30ms milestone. Proximus improved its score by just under 1ms, but both Orange and Telenet saw higher improvements in their scores — of 1.7ms and 3.7ms respectively — to close the gap on the leader.

Latency is an often overlooked metric as the benefits of a low latency connection aren't as obvious as fast speeds or wide-ranging availability. But latency affects the consumer mobile experience in many subtle ways as it is a measure of a network's response time, which can impact mobile services and apps in numerous ways. Lower latency connections mean webpages and videos begin loading faster and real-time communications apps experience less lag.