Digi's Belgium launch is pretty basic for now

At this stage, we're talking a pretty basic service offer from the new telco. It has a single, low-cost mobile plan and fibre broadband, but the latter is only available in a specific area of Brussels. It's a small start, but there is the promise of more to come from the Romania-based operator group that is making its presence felt in a number of key European markets.

"Belgium, we are live!" declared Jeroen Degadt, general manager of Digi Belgium, in a LinkedIn post.

"Our mission is to make telecommunications accessible to all Belgians," he added, in a more formal, French language release. "Today, we are announcing the first step in our commitment to provide exceptional quality services at an affordable price."

It's too early to comment on quality, but the company's stance on pricing certainly stacks up. It offers a single, €5-per-month SIM-only plan that comes with unlimited calls and messaging and 15 GB of data. That's enough data for almost 75% of Belgians, Digi says. Additional data is available though, priced at 60 cents per GB.

Prices for its Digi Fiber offer start at €10 per month, although that's not applicable to most people at the moment; the service is only available in the Brussels neighbourhood of Cureghem. However, Digi noted that it is rolling out fibre elsewhere in the Belgian capital before expanding to other municipalities. And there are plans afoot to add a TV service into the mix too.

For now though, all eyes are really on that new mobile offer that makes Digi Belgium's fourth MNO.

Well, sort of. Digi is working on the deployment of its own 4G and 5G network, having formed a joint venture company with local player Citymesh, which picked up spectrum in mid-2022. A year later the pair brokered a mobile wholesale deal with Proximus and, according to Belga News Agency, Digi has launched services on the incumbent's 4G network, not yet on its own infrastructure.

Nonetheless, Digi and Citymesh's commercial launch does mean the arrival of a new facilities-based player in Belgium – albeit with highly limited facilities thus far – and that will have an impact on the rest of the market.

Indeed, Proximus's shares plummeted on Digi's launch announcement, falling as low as €5 on Wednesday, having opened 58 cents higher than that and traded at closer to €7 less than a month earlier. Reuters pointed out that the telco's share price was at its lowest ever, which gives some insight into the level of competition the market expects Digi to bring.

"We design, test and build everything ourselves, optimising our costs so that the savings are directly transferred to our customers," Degadt said. "Our experienced technicians have successfully deployed mobile and fibre networks in Romania, Spain, Italy and Portugal, providing more than 26 million quality telecom services across Europe."

Digi has teamed up with Vodafone in its home market, where it is already an established operator, with the pair looking to broker a deal for OTE's Telekom Romania Mobile. It bolstered its Portuguese potential with an agreement to buy Nowo in August and last month launched commercial services in the market. It is an MVNO of fairly long standing in Italy, and has had a presence in Spain for some time, where it is now working hard to establish itself as the fourth national player, aided in no small part by the Orange/MasMovil merger.

The Belgian launch signs off on Digi's recent international expansion plans, or at least on those it had publicly announced. But it would be unwise to bet against it looking for opportunities elsewhere going forward.