Brussels

Before Proximus drilled into the façades of homeowners without consent, they announced it and offered free interior installation in return.

It’s still a bit off. Easements are supposed to be written into the title of the house and the easements on my street do not include attaching wires to the façade. So IIUC, in principle they should have to install poles or run the cables under the sidewalk.

I can understand they want to save money. But they should need permission at a minimum to drill into façades without an easement. It’s a bit disturbing for a couple reasons:

• Proximus charges a staggering €60+/month for access
• Proximus unlawfully refuses cash payments

Both of those issues ultimately make the service exclusive. That is, many people probably cannot afford €60/month. Unbanked people are also excluded from service. So two groups of people are unreasonably excluded from fiber service yet they must tolerate having cables attached to their house that they cannot use.

Now a new fiber competitor “Digi” (aka “Citymesh”) is drilling into façades to install their own fiber alongside Proximus’ fiber. They made no announcement, warning, or apology. It’s unclear why they cannot simply zip-tie their cable onto other cables.

But what is going on? They say they cannot share Proximus’ cable and that they must run their own. But according to the linked article Digi has a partnership with Proximus. Are they partners or competitors? It could be both, but what’s the bottom line for consumers?

I have no idea if Digi would be cheaper or if they would accept cash, but their website is in Cloudflare’s walled garden so they are unacceptibly exclusive just by that alone. Services that are exclusive should not be able to drill into people’s houses like this.