BIPT: six planned checks that touch your subscription

The BIPT, called IBPT in French, is the Belgian telecom regulator: it checks operators and can fine them, from 250 to 1,000,000 euros in the decisions read for this article. It does not settle your personal dispute. For a contested bill, an outage or a switch that drags on, the right desk is the Telecommunications Ombudsman Service.

Six fines, from 250 to 1,000,000 euros

The regulator does not write to the wronged customer. It sends a decision to the operator, then publishes it on its website. Six of them are enough to see what it watches.

Read on 12 October 2026 in the BIPT decisions and press releases, including the release of 21 January 2020 and the one of 13 May 2026. The 2019 fine is taken from our guide on the customer number.

Between the smallest and the largest, the ratio is 1 to 4,000. It says little about households, though. What stands out is the reason: the three heaviest penalties, 1,000,000, 300,000 and 150,000 euros, land on switching moves, changing operator or activating a SIM card. No decision read concerns a disappointing speed or an outage.

The January 2020 fines tell the same story another way. Checks carried out in 2018 had shown that some Proximus and Telenet points of sale did not identify the buyer of a prepaid card properly: no copy of the passport shown by a foreign customer, and at Proximus no check that the identity card had not been declared stolen or lost. Customers who did not re-identify ended up deactivated, and the regulator took that regularisation campaign into account when setting the amounts. Lycamobile had already received two fines for the same reasons.

A household that saw a SIM card go dead without warning did not necessarily suffer a bug. It may have run into a check.

Telenet: 53 shops out of 87 did not mention Easy Switch

In June 2023, the BIPT visited 87 Telenet shops. In 53 of them, 61%, the salesperson did not spontaneously mention Easy Switch. Twenty-eight were compliant, six gave incomplete information.

Easy Switch must be the standard procedure, the regulator writes. It therefore computed the fine as an accounting exercise. Base: 0.8% of relevant turnover of 1,238,200,000 euros, i.e. 9,905,600 euros. A 10% increase because the breach had continued despite warnings, a 30% overall reduction for no proven intent, cooperation, training and mystery shopping: 6,933,920 euros. Then one last reduction, on proportionality grounds, down to 1,000,000 euros.

That million is 14.4% of the computed amount, about 0.08% of the turnover used and 0.7% of the legal ceiling of 140,635,000 euros. The maximum was never the goal.

Does a fine change anything for the subscriber?

Indirectly, yes. Directly, no. The 2023 fine refunds no Telenet customer, and the decision read provides no individual compensation. Its effect shows elsewhere: in shops, Easy Switch must be presented as the standard procedure, and the BIPT set aside as a mitigating circumstance the "Critical Business Incident" the operator put forward.

It matters because Easy Switch carries fixed compensation. The scale detailed in our Easy Switch guide provides for example 10 euros per day of outage and 30 euros if the technician does not show up. A customer who never heard of the procedure does not claim them. That is why a shop check, apparently a sales detail, weighs more for a household than many articles of law.

Six checks planned for 2026, six moments of a subscription

The BIPT's 2026 operational plan lists the year's checks. Six touch a household directly, and each matches a precise moment of the contract.

2026 operational plan of the BIPT, read on 12 October 2026. The last moment is my own reading: the plan only mentions bill shock.

Take the second line. A subscriber leaving an operator meets two documents: the contract, whose cancellation clauses are checked, and the annual bill summary, where some mentions are mandatory. If either is incomplete, leaving gets complicated before it has even begun. For a price rise during a contract the reasoning is the same, and our article on the right to leave after a price rise shows where the window sits.

In the extract read, no line mentions real speed, coverage or customer-service waiting times at telecom operators. The same plan also provides an evaluation of the Easy Switch decree, with a report to the minister in the fourth quarter, and guidelines for the next tariff simulator. Our article on the BIPT comparison tool and its blind spots explains why that simulator is not enough to choose.

SIM swap: a hack at Orange reopened portability

One line of the plan reads badly without context. Action 1/2026/13 provides a revision of how mobile portability requests are validated, due in the fourth quarter. Its trigger is written plainly: a hack at Orange Belgium (own mobile network, Walloon cable ex-VOO) that allowed number hijackings, SIM swapping. An anti-fraud task force led by the Numbering department also meets every three weeks.

Can the BIPT settle my dispute?

No, in principle. In its opinion of 17 March 2025, the regulator describes itself as responsible for checking the electronic communications law and protecting users, with a method built on dialogue and support for operators. It recalls that the law provides for telling consumers about the Ombudsman Service in case of dispute.

Here are four things it will not do for you:

• refund you or impose a commercial gesture, no decision read provides individual compensation;
• rule between you and your operator, a task for the Ombudsman, whose procedure is free and non-binding according to the European Commission;
• set a figure for an operator's reply time: the Ombudsman's rules ask for a reply "as soon as possible", and a draft royal decree set 4 working days, 10 for a bill dispute, after a consultation closed on 16 November 2023, without my finding its publication in the Belgian Official Gazette;
• investigate a specific call, which the Ombudsman does through a separate form.

The Ombudsman, for its part, received 15,087 requests in 2025, down 6.31%. They consist of 12,445 mediation complaints and 2,642 identification requests for nuisance communications. A mediation complaint was handled in 35 days on average, an identification in 11 days.

Selectra, 6 April 2026, based on the annual report of the Ombudsman Service. L'Avenir publishes other, higher figures because it counts requests for intervention, identifications included.

The lines of this table do not add up cleanly: their sum is 12,501, whereas the total of mediation complaints is 12,445. The two sources therefore count differently, and it is better to read the changes than the units.

Three operators in the household: who do you contact for what?

A typical household keeps the bundle with Proximus, a mobile line with Orange and a DIGI card (own network) for the teenager. Each problem has its desk.

The FPS Economy's Economic Inspectorate can investigate and sanction, but it does not step into an individual dispute, the Forum for the Future foundation points out. It is the same principle as for the BIPT. Each one watches a market, a single desk handles your file.

Sources: BIPT (fine decisions, press releases of 21 January 2020 and 13 May 2026, 2026 operational plan, opinion of 17 March 2025), Telecommunications Ombudsman Service, European Commission (the body's page on the consumer redress platform), Selectra and L'Avenir (the Ombudsman's 2025 annual report), FPS Economy (consumerconnect.be), Forum for the Future.