Comment Hope it works out (Score 2) 54
Seems like all of Belgium's neighbours are developing plans to roll out FTTx .
Meanwhile we're stuck in the dark ages and this country's telecom duopoly (Belgacom & Telenet) can't seem to care.
On one hand we have the semi-nationalised Belgacom, earning money on the network they were able to roll out using taxpayer's money.
They recently decided investing in FTTH is too soon, preferring to look into revitalizing DSL technology to support marginally higher speeds (50 MBit instead of 20).
Smaller providers resell their service with somewhat better pricing and conditions, but they are not big enough to make a dent.
Then there's Telenet which owns the cable market on the Flemish side of the country. They started advertising "Faster than light" 100/5 Mb/s connections to customers, but were forced to retract this ad due to false advertising because 1) It's not faster then light 2) Their product FibetNet is not actually FTTH but fiber to the neighbourhood and then distributed across DOCSIS 3.0 modems.
Bottom line: neither company has any financial intrest in rolling out FTTH, citing high costs and low potential returns. They seem to think their current products are more than fast enough for today's online applications and that technology firms don't need to invest in new technologies to remain in business.
Years ago a plan was hatched by politician Vincent Van Quickenborne called SuperFastBelgium. It aimed to promote fiber rollout with financial incentives to companies. Nothing ever happened. I wrote an e-mail to that politician's cabinet asking what happened and if there had been any meetings with industry leaders as promised. I only got a political bullshit answer, nothing concrete at all. (Never voting for you!)
So it is with a tear in my eye that I read this article and hope that one day, people in charge here wake up and actually get off their asses to do something for a change. Because I want my 1 Gbps FTTH!!!
