Belgacom IPTV

Belgacom is the incumbent telecommunications operator in Belgium. The company remains the Belgian market leader in a number of areas, including retail and wholesale fixed-line telephony services, mobile communications services, broadband data, Internet and IPTV services. In September 2004, Belgacom announced that it would be conducting trials for its TV service from November 2004. The ‘Belgacom TV’ service was tested on 1000 families living in Ghent, Brussels and Liege using ADSL2+ and VDSL technology. A digital TV service for the residential market was introduced in June 2005.

In preparation for the full roll-out of Belgacom’s IPTV service, the Broadway Project was launched, bringing fibre to the street cabinet and rolling out a VDSL platform between street cabinet and customers. The roll-out reached VDSL coverage of 45 per cent at the end of 2006. Earlier, in H2 2005, Belgacom started the roll-out of ADSL2+ to improve the quality and accessibility of Belgacom TV services.

This was followed by the implementation of VDSL2 fibre-to-the-node solutions. This network upgrade enabled Belgacom to deploy large-scale triple play, including multiple IPTV channels on multiple TV sets simultaneously and High Definition Television (HDTV).