VOO’s hybrid fiber (fiber optic fiber) is a technology from yesterday to the narrow room for maneuver. Problem, the deployment of optical fiber is an expensive operation. Worse, the Belgo-Roumain Digi competitor installs his fiber in Brussels at Hussarde, to offer subscriptions from € 10 per month.
In short, Orange Belgium must raise the level of its game to guarantee the future of its Internet connections. Here are the three parts of his plan.
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1. Tests push the old Voo cable up to 4 Gbps
The VOO fixed network in Wallonia and Brussels is made up of optical fiber and coaxial cable in the last meters that separate the street housing housing.
This good old TV cable acts as a bottleneck, especially for the shipping speed (Upload). The download speed (download) climbs as best as possible to 1 Gbps (gigabit per second), against 50 Mbps (megabits per second) in sending.
“We continue our operations to modernize this fixed network, and even extension via subsidies which allow us to cover areas which only have DSL (Editor’s note: copper wire)”, welcomes Xavier Pichon, the CEO of Orange Belgium.
On the sidelines of this work which aim to perpetuate “stable flows, around the Gigabit per second”, Orange leads to the VOO network of local tests which push the download speed between 2 Gbps and 4 Gbps.
“We do not yet commit this subject, because we do not yet know if it is relevant to our customers. It can depend locally, so we could deploy these speeds in very dense areas, in which we have a lot of traffic and a lot of capacities to sell.”
2. The real start of the deployment of orange fiber in Ixelles
It is more than ever acquired. Rather than collaborating, operators clearly prefer to deploy their own fiber optic network in the most densely populated areas, especially in large cities.
Orange is no exception to the rule and embarks on the big bath after a certain delay in ignition, especially compared to Proximus.
“We started a large -scale fiber deployment in the town of Ixelles,” explains Xavier Pichon. “Large scale not at the quantitative level, but in the sense that we use an industrial, peak, similar format that will be more generally used on large operations to deploy Fiber to the Home (Editor’s note: fiber to the house) in our network area.”
3. The agreement with Proximus in the smallest zones, but …
If the operators want to go to a rider alone on the fiber in the densely populated areas, the situation is quite different elsewhere in areas with medium and low density of Wallonia. Economically speaking, there are all the reasons to build collaborations and this is exactly what Orange Belgium and Proximus try to do in their memorandum of understanding of July 25, 2025.
Three main principles carry this protocol which is the subject of an investigation by the Belgian competition authority.
First principle, in the average density areas of Wallonia, Proximus will continue the deployment of fiber via Unifiber but will gradually open this infrastructure to Orange Belgium customers. Target: 600,000 households and businesses.
Second principle, in the lower density areas of Wallonia, Proximus and Orange Belgium will work together with the deployment of fiber. Target: 200,000 households and businesses.
Third principle, in the least populated areas of Wallonia, Proximus will be able to offer its services to 600,000 homes via the Hybrid Network of Voo.