By akademiotoelektronik, 12/07/2022

A law to force operators to reduce your bill: it blocks

The bill which wants to oblige Proximus and company to offer you the best price will soon come back in a revised and corrected form.

The Council of State has just reversed the project of a law supposed to combat dormant contracts that link telecom operators and customers.It’s a halt, not a scrub.Supposed to protect the interests of Belgian consumers, the text available at this address will soon be reformulated and repropossed.

If this law should finally be adopted, Proximus, Orange, Voo, Telenet and others would be obliged to regularly offer you the best price plan available to replace your service (Internet, Mobile, Digital TV, etc.) or your pack (several serviceson a single invoice) which is no longer marketed.

The example of a sleeping contract

Take a specific example of a sleeping contract:

– Un client de l’ancien pack Proximus Familus (Internet + TV + téléphone fixe) débourse 72€ par mois depuis l’augmentation appliquée le 1er janvier 2021.

– Le pack Proximus Flex équivalent coûte 70,99€ par mois. Il comprend également des bonus, comme la location d’un module WiFi Booster qui étend la portée du WiFi.

The Familus proximus pack is the typical example of the obsolete sleeping contract.Its holder pays more (€ 12.12 per year) to obtain services lower than those of the similar package during marketing.

A two -step migration

The bill submitted to the Chamber by the Economy, Consumer Protection Commission and Digital Agenda intended to take this problem in arms.

The text imagined two main stages:

- Once a year, the telecom operator informs the customer (by letter or SMS) of an obsolete service or pack of the existence of a similar price plan during more advantageous marketing.

- If the customer does not manifest himself, the operator automatically transfers it to the new formula after a certain period.

Incompatible with European law

It is this precise point of the automatic transfer of the customer that ticks the Council of State in its opinion rendered on September 20, 2021. To be short, this transfer is not compatible with the European Code of Electronic Communications.

"Given the opinion of the Council of State, we must adapt our bill," confirms the deputy Patrick Prévot (PS).“But philosophy will remain the same.We cannot expect from the consumer that he is able to study at every moment a complex market composed of a series of technical parameters, such as download speed, megabytes (MB), etc.We want to avoid abuses and allow the customer to have a transparent view of all contracts to allow him to easily access the best price plan. "

Programmed return

This bill could soon return to a text that ignores the concept of automatic migration of the customer.Only the obligation to regularly inform the customer of the existence of a more advantageous price plan than the obsolete dormant contract.

The reluctance of the telecoms gendarme

In his opinion rendered on August 17, 2021, the Belgian Institute of Postal Services and Telecommunications (IBPT) also underlined the legal incompatibility between this 1983 bill and the European Code of Electronic Communications.But the telecoms gendarme had pushed the reflection a notch further, considering such a little relevant measure, especially for fixed services (Internet, TV, landline)."Regarding the fixed telecommunications market," argues the IBPT, "we have seen more increases for years than price reductions.A change to a new and more advantageous price will be more difficult to find, unless you change the portfolio of services concerned. ”

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