Flemish government reaches agreement with providers on gigabit fiber in 2020

On Monday, the Flemish government reached an agreement with providers Proximus and Telenet. In 2020, a ‘network of the future’ should be created, which should be able to deliver speeds of up to 1Gbit/s via fiber. The previous plan for a public company is therefore scrapped.

Datanews writes that the Flemish Minister for Innovation, Philippe Muyters, announced the results of the talks with the providers in the radio program De Morgen. For example, he has agreed a memorandum of understanding with Telenet and Proximus. The providers report that four conditions have been formulated: ‘future-proof capacity, a sufficiently high coverage ratio, open access for other market players and a fair and competitive remuneration’. According to Datanews, Muyters thinks that coverage and price are the most important points. No additional investments would have been included in the agreements on either side.

In September of last year, Muyters announced plans to expand the fiber network with a public company. Datanews describes this option as ‘a big stick behind the door’ if the providers did not want to cooperate. At the time, Muyters wanted to enter into talks with Proximus and Telenet; even then there was a requirement that the providers would open their network to other providers and that they would charge an affordable price.

According to Datanews, Proximus says: “The minister had expressed a certain concern, about which we had a very constructive dialogue. We were able to make clear that our plan for fiber does indeed meet the priorities of the government. This agreement is a recognition of that. “