Proximus or Telenet: which one delivers?

Proximus or Telenet: the answer depends first on your address. Telenet only serves fixed lines in Flanders, Brussels and a handful of Hainaut municipalities, while Proximus covers the whole country. Where both are available, Telenet is cheaper on a full bundle, and Proximus keeps the edge on coverage.

Both are converged operators: they own their own fixed network and their own mobile network, and sell both in a single bundle with a single bill. That is what separates them from a Scarlet or a Mobile Vikings, which rent someone else's network. This difference explains a large part of their prices, and of their promises.

Proximus or Telenet: which should you choose in Belgium?

Telenet if you are on its cable and the bill matters; Proximus if you want the safest coverage, especially outside cities. Neither is the budget choice on the Belgian market.

The duel has long been presented as an even match. It is not, really. Proximus is the incumbent, present at every address in the country through its VDSL copper network and then its fibre. Telenet is a cable operator: its upgraded coaxial network, which performs very well, stops where the cable was laid, meaning Flanders, Brussels and a few Walloon municipalities. The rest of the country never had the choice.

Concretely, for a household in Ghent or Brussels reaching the end of a promotion, both offers are on the table and the price gap leans towards Telenet. For a household in Namur or Liège, the real comparison is not Proximus against Telenet, but Proximus against VOO, Orange or DIGI. Many comparison pages forget to say so.

Is Telenet available at my address?

Only if the Telenet cable runs past your home. It covers Flanders, Brussels and seven municipalities in the southern tip of Hainaut, with a few extensions in Hainaut and the province of Namur. Elsewhere in Wallonia, no.

The Belgian fixed market rests on three overlapping infrastructures: the coaxial cable, historically split between Telenet in the north and VOO in the south; the Proximus VDSL copper network deployed across the whole territory; and optical fibre, which has been progressing since 2023. This geography, inherited from the analogue cable of the 1970s, still decides your options today.

Your address changes everything: two households twenty kilometres apart, one in Mouscron and one in Tournai, do not get the same list of operators. Telenet itself promotes a checker asking "is the Telenet cable present in my neighbourhood?" rather than a regional map, which says a lot about the real granularity of the network.

What if Telenet does not reach your home?

Then compare Proximus with what actually exists at your address: VOO cable in Wallonia and Brussels, fibre where it has been deployed, or an alternative operator renting the Proximus network (Scarlet, EDPnet). An eligibility test with two different operators, plus the coverage Atlas of the IBPT (the Belgian telecom regulator), is enough to see which technologies serve you. Until that test is done, comparing prices is pointless.

Who is cheaper, Proximus or Telenet?

Telenet, on equivalent packages. The 2026 surveys give a set of internet + TV + landline + mobile at around 107 EUR/month at Telenet, 114 EUR at Orange and a minimum of 117.99 EUR at Proximus.

A gap of roughly ten euros a month does not sound huge, but it means about 130 EUR over a year and 260 EUR over a standard two-year commitment. At entry level the ranking holds without widening: Telenet Easy Internet is listed at 35.44 EUR/month for 150 GB and 100 Mbit/s, against 39.99 EUR/month for Proximus Internet Light, the cheapest internet subscription in the Proximus catalogue.

Sources: Test-Achats (Proximus 2026 subscriptions, Telenet price increase), speed-telecom.be (2026 telecom price increases), abonnement-tv-internet.be (bundle comparison), Telenet and Proximus. Figures collected in August 2026, to be checked at your address.

What it really costs after the promotion

Both operators run launch discounts over six or twelve months, then return to the full rate. The trap is comparing two promotional prices with each other: they do not last and they do not necessarily run for the same period. Note the standard rate of both packages, add activation fees and any set-top box rental, then divide the total over twenty-four months. That is the only figure that lets you decide honestly.

Which has the better network and speed?

Proximus for reach, Telenet for raw speed. The former covers the entire country, including rural areas where others drop off; the latter holds the highest fixed download speed in Belgium, up to 1 Gbps.

The distinction matters because the two are often confused. Coverage answers "does it reach my home, does it get a signal?". Speed answers "how fast". Proximus wins the first, notably on mobile outside built-up areas, where its network remains the benchmark in coverage tests. Telenet wins the second, wherever its hybrid fibre-coaxial cable has been upgraded.

A simple example: in a village in Walloon Brabant, the gigabit question does not even arise, since only the Proximus network is present. In an Antwerp flat, the Telenet cable delivers a gigabit downstream without difficulty, and the comfort gap against a rival offer plays out on upload speed and evening stability instead, when the neighbourhood's shared coax gets congested.

Proximus or Telenet: who has the better customer service?

A draw, or nearly. The Test-Achats satisfaction survey puts the four big operators within a narrow band, between 66 and 70 points out of 100, with Proximus last of that quartet.

That ranking deserves a careful read. Proximus is last of the four on satisfaction, yet Test-Achats also gives it the awards for best operator on 3play offers (internet, digital TV and mobile) and 4play (adding the landline). In other words, the organisation judges its offer the most complete on the market while noting that its customers are slightly less happy than average. Both findings coexist, and the size of the customer base explains part of the gap.

On public review platforms, both brands attract the same recurring complaint, worded almost identically: the network holds, the support does not keep up. At Telenet, criticism also concentrates on billing. These self-reported sources mechanically attract unhappy customers, so they indicate a trend, not a score.

Is complaint volume a good criterion?

Not on its own. The 2025 annual report of the Ombudsman Service for Telecommunications, published in March 2026, records 4,539 files against Proximus, 3,884 against Telenet Group and 2,895 against Orange. Read raw, that ranking mechanically penalises the operator with the most customers. The useful figure is the trend: Telenet is down 24.42% and Proximus down 19.65% year on year, while Orange is up 32.93%. Both giants are moving in the right direction, one slightly faster than the other.

The 2026 price increases on your bill

Both operators raised prices in 2026, but not in the same way. Proximus lifted its bundles by 2 to 4 EUR/month from January. Telenet chose to unbundle instead: the landline, previously included in ONE packages, became a paid option at 2 EUR/month from 16 March 2026.

The Telenet method is more discreet, but the effect on the bill is comparable. A ONE customer who had never thought about their landline, often unused, found an extra line on their statement. You then either accept the 2 EUR or explicitly cancel the option. The same move hit Orange and EDPnet that year.

Which one delivers better on fibre?

Proximus, on deployment. It builds its own FTTH network and took full control of Unifiber on 28 May 2026 by buying out Eurofiber's stake, in order to accelerate in Wallonia. Unifiber's network already allows nearly 230,000 homes and businesses to be connected to fibre.

Telenet made a different bet: rather than recabling everything, it upgrades its coax into hybrid fibre-coaxial and cooperates with Fiberklaar, the Proximus affiliate, through its network company Wyre. The deal got the green light from the Belgian Competition Authority. The result for customers is close in daily use, but the technologies differ, and true fibre to the home is not yet the norm at Telenet.

Worth noting for a Walloon household: Proximus has also struck a deal to open the Unifiber network to Orange customers, subject to validation by the regulator. Fibre built by Proximus therefore does not force you to become a Proximus customer, which makes the price calculation more interesting than it first appears.

Should you stay with one of the two, or go elsewhere?

If budget rules, neither. Alternative operators stay clearly below for comparable usage, and the Test-Achats satisfaction survey ranks them ahead of the four big players.

Stay with Proximus or Telenet for three valid reasons: maximum coverage at a poorly served address, a full TV package with a set-top box and recording, or a single point of contact when you have no appetite for managing two bills. Outside those cases, the price gap against a DIGI, a Scarlet or a Mobile Vikings is hard to justify, especially after the 2026 increases.

Switching itself is no longer the nightmare people fear. Easy Switch, free and supervised by the IBPT, has the new operator cancel the old contract for you, transfers the mobile number and coordinates the internet handover to limit downtime. The real brake is psychological: the fear of a weekend without a connection, not the procedure.

To go further, compare our pick of the best internet + TV + mobile bundle in Belgium, check which operator has the best customer service before signing, and above all verify whether fibre is available at your address or what your address dictates between cable and VDSL.