Belgian Mobile Data Plans Compared

Tables last updated: June 22, 2015
Text last updated: October 2014

Note: the tables are held up to date. The text also is most of the time, however it’s possible I sometimes forget to do that, given the frequency at which the plans are updated. If you see an error somewhere, don’t hesitate to tell me.

Being a Mobile Vikings client ever since I’ve had my first smartphone — an Xperia X8, what a horrible phone :P —, I ended up asking myself if it really was the best offer. So, I decided to compare my actual offer to every other prepaid plan with mobile data. I also took a look at monthly plans. Here are the results of my research. I’ve put the most interesting in bold and the second most interesting in italics.

Prepaid plans¶

We can see Mobile Vikings is the most interesting operator for a whole lot of things.

Concerning mobile data, Mobistar offers on gigabyte more. For the other operators, if you need more than the 2 GB offered, the most interesting seems to be Generation Connect, because you can simply buy additional data packs with your calling credit. With Mobile Vikings, if you want more, you have to take the €25 top-up, which will give you 3 GB of data, 3,000 free texts and a €0.125/min calling rate, which is also quite interesting. Concerning data roaming, Mobile Vikings is way on top of the others, except if you head to Mobistar‘s Extended Zone².

Concerning text messaging, Generation Connect offers ‘unlimited’ texts (10,000), which is nice for big consumers. Mobistar Internet on Mobile offers 5,000 free texts for €20, which is also quite nice. However, if you have a substantial number of contacts that are Mobile Vikings (or that you make them become Vikings :D), the 300 free texts per day to Mobile Vikings are more interesting (especially since you don’t have to pay €5 more per month). For normal consumers, Mobile Vikings clearly has the best offer.

The price of a text out of your bundle is the cheapest with Mobile Vikings and Mobistar. Once you look at international and roaming, Mobile Vikings is, again, way better than the others, except for texts to Belgium when you’re roaming, since in that case Mobistar is at the same rate.

Concerning calls, Mobistar offers 50 free calling minutes. Mobile Vikings, however, offers you 1 hour of free calling per day to other Vikings, which is again really interesting if people you call often are using Mobile Vikings. Concerning the calling rate, Mobile Vikings is 20% cheaper than the others. If you look at international and roaming prices, we can see Mobile Vikings is, again, the most interesting one, except for roaming calls from a non-European country to Belgium, where others can be more interesting, depending on the country you’re going. For incoming calls when you’re outside of Europe, Mobile Vikings is the worst of the three.

For the rest, all operators have 4G, so there’s no major difference between the two regarding that, except maybe the fact that Generation Connect has a better coverage at the moment, followed by BASE and then by Mobistar. Moreover, BASE has Dual-Carrier 3G and usually expands its coverage really fast. Why am I talking about BASE, you say? Because Mobile Vikings uses their network (but they’re an independent company).

In short, I won’t change my operator, I still think it rocks. I really thought Generation Connect would have a lot more stuff that’s better than Mobile Vikings. Seems I was wrong. Let’s take a look at monthly plans now.

Monthly plans¶

Regarding prices, BASE clearly has the best one, followed by Proximus and finally Mobistar. When we look at the rest, BASE also seems to be on top for most things.

If we look at mobile data, we can see that Proximus has the smallest volume, the highest out-of-bundle rate and the highest international rate. Mobistar and BASE have the same prices, except for international data, where BASE is far ahead of its competitors.

Concerning text messages, Proximus has the advantage of having truely unlimited texts. However, it seems impossible to use the 10,000 free texts per month offered by other operators, so in the end, it’s kind of a tie. The only thing to consider is BASE‘s 350 texts per day limit, which could cause problems for some people. But, hey, when you think about it, it’s still 25 texts per hour, which is a little less than one text every two minutes. That should be more than enough for ‘normal’ people. For the rest, BASE and Mobistar have the cheapest international texts, leaving Proximus way behind. For roaming texts, BASE is largely ahead again.

Let’s look at calls now. Mobistar offers half an hour more free calls compared to the others, but BASE has a cheaper calling rate once you exceed that. International calls to Europe on the Proximus and Mobistar networks make a distinction between landlines and cell phones, which is pretty nice. However, BASE doesn’t depend on that, so it can be cheaper, depending on where you want to call. The conclusions for calls to the rest of the world are pretty similar. Calling Belgium from abroad is the cheapest on the BASE network again, followed by Mobistar. Proximus‘ unique rate can have an advantage when you’re out of Europe, depending on the country. Receiving calls in Europe is the cheapest on the BASE network again. Receiving calls in other countries depends on where you’re going, but BASE seems to be more interesting.

As said above, BASE has Dual-Carrier 3G and 4G has finally arrived. Mobistar is the only one with a bonus, which could be interesting to some people.

And you? What operator are you using and why? Tell us in the comments :-)