L’avvio dell’operatore di telecomunicazione Digi sta lanciando un nuovo tasso di suolo

**Digi Belgium, the new telecom operator in our country, unpacks again Wednesday with a bottom rate: a subscription of 3 euros per month for 5 gigabytes of mobile data. The company thus seems to want to take a bigger bite out of the market.**

Digi announced a new product in a short press release on Wednesday. This is a 5 gigabyte (GB) subscription for 3 euros per month, which the telecom company said “covers most users’ needs – social media, surfing, music streaming and shopping apps – at a fraction of the usual cost. In December, when it launched as a newcomer to the Belgian market, Digi had already shaken up the industry with another bottom rate, 15 GB for 5 euros a month.

What is striking about the new subscription is that only calls and texts to other Digi customers are included, albeit unlimited. Calls or texts to customers of other networks require a supplement. This makes the product difficult to compare.

**Network construction**

The announcement is also notable because Digi had just announced in recent weeks that its focus for now is more on building out its mobile and fiber networks, rather than on commercial efforts to attract customers. At the end of March, the newcomer appeared to have 53,000 customers in our country. Competitors had already made it clear that Digi is not making a big deal out of its launch for the time being.

CEO Jeroen Degadt said in a comment that network construction remains “the top priority. However, he says the operator had been planning to launch the new product for some time, so it requires little additional work. Degadt says he is pleased with Digi’s results in the first quarter. Therefore, the additional product is ‘totally not coming’ because the numbers would be disappointing. ‘We want to make telecom affordable in Belgium and the offer comes as a step to attract even more customers.’

**Competition**

The additional tariff appears to be an attempt to take a bigger bite out of the market. For example, it dives below Scarlet’s cheapest subscription, market leader Proximus PROX0.13%
. Scarlet charges 8 euros a month for 5 GB. However, Hey!, the budget brand of Orange Belgium OBEL0.31%
, seems at first glance even more advantageous with 9 euros per month for 25 GB. But as said, comparison is difficult.

Digi had 53,000 customers in Belgium at the end of March

In any case, Digi’s move further fuels competition. This week, a new price study by telecom regulator BIPT had already revealed that Digi is the cheapest mobile telecom operator in the country, except for the greediest data guzzlers. According to BIPT, the newcomer’s launch led to “a breakthrough” in the mobile telephony market: quite a few brands responded to Digi’s offer with price and volume adjustments.

**Honky Belgian**

But the regulator also noted in the same study that, in practice, Belgian consumers “are and remain primarily customers of the brands that have historically been present on the market and their B-brands that, in particular, offer large forfits of mobile data. In other words, even for telecom, Belgians tend to remain loyal.

In addition, Digi has been in the news several times in recent months with problems of all kinds. Telecom Minister Vanessa Matz (Les Engagés) sat down with the company at the end of last month following the high number of complaints to the telecommunications ombudsman. The minister asked for a concrete commitment from the operator to greatly reduce the number of complaints and to strictly observe subscribers’ rights. However, Digi reiterated on Wednesday that it was in the meantime working on the problems and that, for example, the waiting time for calls to customer service is now limited.
Digi is now also laying fiber optics in Ghent