The telecommunications operator Orange does not lack ambition. Orange wants to provide all Belgians with gigabit internet this year and is paving the way for 10 Gbit/s.

Orange Belgium today invited the press to its headquarters in Evere to explain its future plans in the fixed-line telecommunications market. In 2023, Orange has made big moves in this market. The company is increasingly benefiting from the acquisition of Voo and, thanks to its close relationships with Telenet (and its joint venture Wyre), can offer fixed-line Internet where it does not have its own network. CEO Xavier Pichon doesn’t shy away from big words: “We are the first provider in Belgium to offer a nationwide gigabit network, six months earlier than planned.”

Orange says it can now reach 95 percent of the B2C and B2B market in Belgium with its gigabit offering, launched in September 2023. The goal for this year is to reach these final percentages. The majority of customers live within a kilometer of the fiber optic infrastructure, but the challenge is to reach customers beyond that, especially in rural areas.

In addition to further modernizing the existing HFC network, satellite technology is also being considered. Orange also wants to introduce a satellite offer on the Belgian market in 2024, but concrete information about how and at what tariffs this will happen remained scarce during the press conference.

No rush for FTTP

By the way, as we discovered at the end of September, Orange now offers “fiber optic.” Orange uses HFC technology, a combination of fiber optic and coax. The underlying network is coax, but the final meters still use coax. This makes high download speeds possible, but upload speeds are still lagging behind for the time being.

This is different from Proximus’ approach to fiber. Proximus chooses decisively Fiber to the building (FTTP)Also Fiber optic to the house where the fiber optic cables enter the router. This different interpretation has already led to disputes between the two providers. In the long term, Orange also wants to offer “full-fledged” fiber optics via Voo’s network.

By 2040, Orange wants to be able to reach 66 percent of the market with its own FTTP (the footprint could rise to 75 percent via the Wyre network), but for now there is “no rush” to make this transition, explains Philippe Toussaint, CTO of the network division from Orange Belgium. The operator assumes that there is still sufficient scope for HFCs.

Race to 10 Gbit/s

Orange may have declared itself the frontrunner in the gigabit race today, but the competition will undoubtedly think otherwise. Proximus and Telenet also claim that they have the best gigabit internet. The race for the next gigabits will begin in 2024. Orange wants to be the first provider to introduce 10 Gbit/s internet nationwide. It has to hurry: Proximus has already made its first (limited) 10 Gbit/s offer at the end of 2022.