As is customary every year, the telecom regulator BIPT subjects the Belgian mobile networks to a thorough survey. With a ski box full of technical equipment and a few smartphones on the roof, two cars crossed the entire country in September and October (2020) last year to examine the surfing and calling experience of the Belgian consumer. Find out more about the fastest mobile downloads in Belgium.

They passed through dozens of major cities, rural areas, and highways in Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels, covering a total of 11,000 km and 250 hours. The experts carried out no fewer than 7,800 telephone calls and 60,000 data tests per network. To ensure the reliability of the tests, the investigated locations were not communicated to the operators in advance.

Fastest download with Telenet/BASE

The drive-by tests showed that the mobile network of Telenet/BASE has not only become faster for downloading but is also still the fastest compared to the other operators. The Telenet/BASE network has an average download speed of 99.5 Mbps, compared to 93 Mbps two years ago. According to BIPT, the average download speed with Proximus is 74.1 Mbps, and 68.3 Mbps with Orange.

The average upload speed with Telenet/BASE is now 24.1 Mbps. This was 22 Mbps in 2018. The Telenet/BASE mobile network has therefore also progressed in this area.

Quality of the conversation FASTEST mobile downloading belgium

BIPT also measures the quality and experience of telephone calls in our country: for example, the number of calls that are successfully started and ended. Anyone who makes calls with Telenet/BASE has the least chance of the telephone call being interrupted by a drop or being lost. 99.9% of the calls at Telenet/BASE run flawlessly. This figure is 99.8% with Orange, and also with Proximus.

With regard to the voice quality of the telephone conversation, BIPT uses a scale from 1 to 5, i.e., from poor to very good. Telenet/BASE and Orange each achieved a score of 4.4. Proximus achieved a score of 4.3.

“Telenet is really very satisfied with these results. We have, of course, invested heavily in technology in recent years, and those efforts are now paying off. And, naturally, we also intend to continue to do this in the coming years. The aim is to continuously make our network faster and more efficient, for both private individuals and companies”, said Micha Berger, Chief Technology Officer at Telenet. FASTEST mobile downloading belgium

Telephone calls without interruption

Two-year increase realised in space of ten months

In normal times, Internet traffic increases about 30% every year.  This year Telenet saw a doubling of this trend over the course of ten months.  Belgians browsed and downloaded 60% more than in 2019 on average. At the start of 2020, the highest measured volume on the fixed Internet network was still 2 terabits per second. On 21 March, the first weekend of the lockdown, that figure fell for the first time when it was 2.6 terabits per second. And on 10 November Belgians added another 11% and traffic peaked at 2.9 Terabits per second. Telenet also recorded high volumes for the rest of that month: on 23 of the 30 November days traffic rose above 2.6 terabit per second. But in the meantime that record was broken again. On 15 December traffic over the network reached the historic cape of 3 terabit per second at 21h05. This means that all internet users together downloaded more than 3.00 gigabits – comparable to as many as 190,000 photographs – on the cable network in one second.

According to classical predictions, Belgians would only achieve such a peak in 2022.

 

Like this? "Sharing is caring!"