Internet and e-commerce industry in Belgium

Belgium, representing a constitutional, popular monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, is a founding member of the European Union hosting its headquarters. Belgium strongly supports an open economy and the extension of the powers of EU institutions to integrate member economies. The country is also a member of other major international organizations, including NATO. Belgium, populated by about 10.7 million people, covers an area of 30,528 square kilometers. Its location at the heart of a highly industrialized region helps made it the world's 15th largest trading nation. Belgium's strongly globalized economy with developed transportation infrastructure that made it to be integrated with the rest of Europe. The country is an active participant of international relations. But what about the Belgium’s ICT infrastructure and e-commerce sector, as one of the most important parts of the economic conditions and development of any modern government? Let’s see.

Being one the smallest and most densely populated countries in Europe, Belgium was initially slow adopting the Internet and related data and broadband, mainly because of the expense of dial-up Internet subscriptions. Nevertheless, over the recent few years the broadband market development has fastened. Belgian broadband coverage has benefited from competition between infrastructure platforms. This nation-wide coverage is combined with a low price ‘Internet for all” initiative to address the low usage of online services reported in 2006.

That growth can be proved by the rapid increase of broadband penetration in the country. Thus, if in 2000 the volume of Internet subscribers made up less than 20%, it surged to 49% by 2006. Currently, according to the latest data from internetworldstats.com, the amount of Internet users in Belgium has reached 70% with 7,292,300 people subscribed. These digits reflect the significant penetration growth of over 250%. Meantime, Belgium has just 1.7% of European Internet market share, that reasoned by the country’s small size and densely population.

Being a heavily cabled country, most broadband activity in Belgium has was initially seen from the cable TV network operators. Although, strong ADSL growth has developed since 2001, while cable has retained a 38-40% market share.

Belgium’s cable network appears to be the biggest one, launched by Telenet in 1997, covers almost all of Flanders, the political community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Speeds offered by vary from 25 Mbit/s to 512 kbit/s down.

Two other main Belgian cable Internet providers are represented by Numéricable (Brussels), with the connection speed of up to 100 Mbit/s, and VOO (Wallonia) providing up to 15 Mbit/s connection.

Concerning the ADSL network, it first was launched in Belgium in 1999, under the name of Turboline, established by the incumbent Belgian telecom operator Belgacom and has been expanding ever since. By 2004 almost 90% of the entire territory could get ADSL connection from Belgacom. Skynet, Belgacom's daughter company, was the first officially supported ADSL ISP. However, a number of smaller ISPs are gaining popularity. Moreover, the majority of ISPs, like Scarlet, Mobistar and Versatel provide full triple play services (Television/Internet/Telephone).

Belgacom, Scarlet, Mobistar and Versatel have created a secondary network, based on local loop unbundling.

Country’s Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is .be, currently administrated by DNS Belgium, since 2000. Being settled in 1989 it previously used to be administered by Pierre Verbaeten of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Two year registration contract under .be domain is very cheap just $89. To be registered under the ccTLD any applicant has to turn to a registered agent.

Domain names can also be registered directly at second level. Some of Belgian's main academic institutions, such as the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, use third-level names under ac.be, but others have abandoned its use (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Universiteit Gent and Université Catholique de Louvain).

The far right party Vlaams Belang has introduced a draft resolution in the Parliament of the region of Flanders demanding the creation of a Flemish top level domain .vl (for "Vlaanderen", Flanders in Dutch) but this resolution failed to receive support of the region's other parties. Only recognized UN member states are eligible for a two-letter domain extension. In October 2008, the Flemish government expressed its intention to obtain a three-letter domain name for Flanders, like .vla, .vln or .fla.

Belgium’s e-commerce sector has also been expanding rapidly driven by ICT sector deployment. However, lagging near the bottom of the EU ranking, however, the minority of public services for citizens are available online. Recent initiatives such as the introduction of the eID card are aimed at bridging this digital divide.

So, over the past several years a lot of e-commerce providers entered Belgian e-commerce market. Some of them are listed below:

• The Reference - offers e-business solutions. Vision on user experience, information on advanced e-business, portfolio and news.
• Alternet - multimedia agency. Website and graphic design, e-marketing , e-communication and e-commerce. Dns domain name, development, hosting, and maintenance services.
• ID Creation – markets itself as a partner for electronic publishing.
• End2End Solutions - e-business provider for Belgian small companies. Focuses on e-business, logistics, customer care and online marketing.
• uniweb.be- professional internet solutions provider: hosting, web design, web development, project management, domain names, trademarks, online marketing, IT consulting, database and business integration.
• tales.be - Belgium based e-company specialised in web design, e-commerce, database connectivity, and shockwave.
• Expanded Media – offers Content and Knowledge Management, Enterprise applications, CRM and e-commerce.
• Interbyte – supplies a wide range of services, including web design, hosting and e-commerce.

Despite this small European country’s ICT infrastructure progress was slow initially, it has managed to become one of the European leaders in terms of Internet and e-commerce development. Moreover ICT advancement is being in process with the adoption and deployment of new technologies.