Belgium is the most expensive country in the EU for telecoms services. An EU-wide cost index showed that Belgian consumers faced the highest price levels for telephone and internet services relative to households in 2025, sitting around 10 points above Sweden.
The latest figures from Eurostat show a significant gap between Belgium and other countries on how much communication services cost compared to the EU average.
Belgian households pay around 46% more than the EU average. Sweden comes second with prices 37.5% above the average. France and Italy fall below, with around 10% cheaper prices.
Communication service prices include the cost of buying or renting equipment, such as mobile phones, alongside network subscription costs for phone and internet services, including call charges.
Weak competition in Belgium
Belgium has traditionally had high prices as a result of weaker competition in its telecoms market, with operators Proximus, Telenet and Orange dominating.
Laura Clays from consumer group Test Achats explained to The Brussels Times that Belgium has a small market size, so new entrants would be asking "does it make sense to make the necessary investments to reach just 11 million potential customers? Many large international providers feel it is not worth it."
She added that for many, the market is too difficult to access: "New entrants must either build their own network from scratch or lease capacity from existing operators. And they charge a lot of money, meaning that a new entrant would be forced to charge high prices themselves and would not really be able to compete."
The federal regulator, the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT), ran a comparison between Belgium and nearby telecoms markets in December.
The results, an annual snapshot in October 2025, showed that the arrival of DIGI as the fourth mobile phone operator has helped to lower the average cost of some mobile phone subscriptions.
Cheaper mobile phone subcriptions
According to Clays, for mobile phone subscriptions, things look a little brighter. "The market is somewhat more easily accessible, which means there exist some players outside the big three," she said.
However for fixed phone and internet, competition remains weak. BIPT's report found that for popular fixed internet Belgium remains by far the most expensive compared to neighbouring countries Luxembourg, The Netherlands, France and Germany. The regulator found that for some internet packages, Belgians could be paying almost three times as much as in France.
"In the market for fixed internet and packs, Belgium generally remains among the more expensive half of the countries. Especially the most extensive bundles, which are the most popular among Belgian consumers, are by far the most expensive," the regulator said in its report.
Belgium's uncompetitive telecoms market has been the focus of previous federal government plans. A national plan for fixed and mobile broadband was launched in 2021, which the new federal government is reviewing.
