Orange Belgium wants to provide satellite internet to customers below 1 Gbit/s speed in 2024 – IT Pro – News

Belgian provider Orange wants to offer satellite internet connections later this year to customers who cannot be reached by a 1 Gb/s network. The provider now says it can offer a 1 Gb/s subscription in 95 percent of Belgium.

Orange is offering satellite internet this year to “the rest of the population” who cannot be connected to 1Gb/s cable or fiber optic in the short term. Orange did not provide any details, but says it is using “the power of the Orange Group.” French branch Orange announced a satellite internet subscription in November last year. This service costs fifty euros per month and provides a download speed of 200 Mbit/s and an upload speed of 15 Mbit/s. This includes a satellite dish for €299, or €8 per month, excluding optional installation costs of €299. Orange is cooperating in this subscription with the French company Nordnet, and connection to the Internet is via the Eutelsat Konnect VHTS satellite, which is designed by Thales Alenia Space.

In Flanders, Orange offers 1 Gb/s services via a Telenet cable subscription. In Wallonia, Orange has its own cable network, through the acquisition of VOO. The Walloon network has now been upgraded to Docsis 3.1, making 1Gb/s download speeds achievable on this network as well. Orange says now To be the first Belgian telecommunications provider to provide 1 Gbps services to 95 percent of Belgian households.

Rural areas in particular do not yet have access to Docsis 3.1. Orange says it will also modernize the cable network in rural areas with support from the federal government and the Walloon region. By the end of 2025, an additional one hundred thousand households should be able to access 1 Gbit/s services.

In addition to satellite and cable, Orange wants to expand the use of FTTH fiber within VOO, to be able to provide FTTH to 66 percent of VOO customers by 2040. In cooperation with Telenet and Fluvius' Wyre fiber network, Orange wants to provide fiber to 75 percent of Belgium by 2040. To this end, Orange will start a pilot project for ground services in Liège and Brussels for approximately 12,000 households in the first quarter of this year. Orange talks about XGS-PON, which enables internet speeds of up to 8 Gbps. In addition, Orange is also looking into new Docsis standards in order to provide faster internet speeds to cable customers.