1. Business telecoms market in Belgium still in a fix
According to Danielle Jacobs, director BELTUG, the lack of competition in the business market remains an obstacle. Alternative providers have focused on different markets such as the big international companies. The predominance of Belgacom makes enterprises and public bodies have little opportunities to develop their own telecoms services optimally. Businesses count on Telenet and Mobistar to make the difference. There are only two mobile telecoms players in the business market: Proximus and Mobistar. Hopefully, the “soft SIM” will be a solution to avoid the red tape when switching to another provider. BELTUG sees a need for a simple and reasonable calculation of taxes and social charges for using smart-phones, PCs, tablets, and the internet (to be split up between business and private use). BELTUG also found out that few enterprises already have a “bring your own device” policy.
2. VoIP remains a tricky problem
[DNNL - DNFR – 2 December 2011]
Although many have predicted a breakthrough of VoIP for years, users keep hesitating to take the decisive step. A survey reveals that 57% of the 300 responding enterprises still have no VoIP switch, that Cisco is market leader with 8%, followed by Alcatel-Lucent and Siemens (7% each), Avaya (6%) and Aastra (4%). BELTUG wants SLAs to be amended, a task the BIPT is working on. Indeed, in case of a break in a Belgacom network cable, an enterprise that is a Telenet customer now sees its SLA annulled as alternative operators depending of Belgacom’s network can never offer watertight guarantees. Another conclusion is that no other market player can offer similar technologies as Belgacom. The survey also reveals who is responsible for ICT: the IT manager (44%), the Facilities manager (25%), the Telecoms manager (10%), and the CFO (4%).
