The Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT) has just released the 2015 update for a study into business pricing in Belgium, which was conducted by the Teligen division of Strategy Analytics.

The study compares the prices of telecommunications services in Belgium with those of four neighbouring countries, namely France, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Prices are compared for a range of business services, and, where relevant for business use, residential services: fixed and mobile voice, fixed and mobile broadband.

The comparison uses a number of usage profiles, which have been developed based on traffic data provided by the Belgian operators, covering typical Belgian business usages. These are shown below in Figure 1.

• Figure 1: Communications service requirements for each business type

The study concluded that telecommunications costs faced by Belgian businesses are broadly mid-range compared to the other study countries.

Belgian businesses with generally low to moderate reliance on communications will generally rank mid-range across the study countries. For these business types, multiplay often features as a more attractive proposition compared to single service procurement in a number of the study countries, more so than in Belgium (most notably France and the UK).

Belgian businesses with a heavier reliance on and higher use of mobile services are generally among the most expensive of the study countries. This is partly due to higher mobile costs in Belgium related to such intensive usage, and partly because of some very competitive mobile tariffs in other countries, which are continually being driven down by strong competition

As far as Belgium is concerned, the changes in price since 2014 across the eight business types have been a mix of increases and decreases, and have, for most business types, been relatively modest, and within the bounds of what might typically be expected, i.e. up to 5% in either direction. It is important to consider that an overall change in the results for this study will be the compound result of changes to individual services, which may be changing in the same way – for example all increasing, or all decreasing – or increases in some services may be countered by decreases in others.

In the study, abstraction is made of non-price related benefits of purchasing multiple products through the same provider (such as single or consolidated billing, and a single point of contact for account management.

Full results from the study, along with detailed information on the methodology used, are available for download free of charge on BIPT’s website.