Belgium
Power & telecom standards in Belgium
Connectivity Overview
Tempest Telecom offered dial-up internet access, WiFi hotspot access, toll-free dial-up access and broadband ethernet access in Belgium. We also offered Iridium satellite Internet and Voice access in Belgium for communications in rural areas without infrastructure.
Belgium uses 230V at 50Hz. Power outlets are type C, E and telephone jacks are RJ-11.
Dial-up Internet Access
Tempest Telecom provided local dial-up access numbers in Belgium at $0.115/minute. Toll-free numbers were also available at $.17/minute. Travelers could connect using any standard modem with an RJ-11 telephone adapter.
WiFi Hotspot Access
Tempest Telecom provided WiFi hotspot access in Belgium at $19.95/day for unlimited browsing.
Adapters & Power
Travelers from North America will need a power plug adapter. European Type C/F adapters are widely compatible.
Standard RJ-11 jacks are used. Most international modems will connect without an adapter.
Belgium at a Glance
- Capital
- Brussels
- Phone Code
- +32
- Voltage
- 230V / 50Hz
- Power Plug
- C, E
- Phone Jack
- RJ-11
- Currency
- Euro
- Dial-up
- $0.115/min
- WiFi
- $19.95/day
About connectivity in Belgium
Belgium uses 230V/50Hz with Type C and Type E outlets. The phone jack is RJ-11. Proximus — the post-1992 successor to the Régie des Télégraphes et Téléphones (RTT/Belgacom) — is the incumbent operator, partially privatized through the 1990s and 2000s. Telenet (the Flemish cable operator), VOO (the Walloon and Brussels cable operator), Orange Belgium, and BASE compete in the regional broadband and mobile markets.
Belgium's academic Belnet opened the country's first international Internet connection in 1990. Commercial dial-up began through 1994-1996 with Belgacom's Skynet (founded as a private ISP, later acquired), EUnet Belgium, INTouch, Wol (the Telindus consumer service), and a long tail of regional providers including Wanadoo Belgium (later Orange). Per-minute metered access through Belgacom PSTN dominated the late 1990s. Belgacom's ADSL Go service launched in 1999-2000 and broadband displaced dial-up rapidly across the early 2000s. Belgium's federal language structure produced a fragmented retail market with separate Flemish and Walloon cable operators.
Belgacom introduced its Telecard magnetic-stripe cardphone system in the late 1980s, with chip-card cardphones following from the mid-1990s. The Belgian commemorative card collector market was substantial, with multilingual Flemish/French/German issues over three decades. The prepaid international calling-card market through the 1990s and 2000s served Belgium's historic Italian, Moroccan, Turkish, Congolese, Rwandan, and Algerian diaspora communities, plus the very large transient EU and NATO institutional populations in Brussels — per-destination card brands sold through neighborhood shops in Sint-Joost, Schaerbeek, Molenbeek, and the inner-city districts of Antwerp, Ghent, and Charleroi. The Proximus / Belgacom payphone fleet has been almost entirely decommissioned since the early 2010s.
Tempest Telecom served Belgium through dial-up POPs in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, and Liège, with WiFi at $19.95/day available at Zaventem Airport, SNCB rail stations, and major hotel chains. As the EU/NATO institutional hub, Brussels was particularly intense for calling-card use through the 2000s, with Tempest's cards heavily used by diplomatic and journalist communities.
Modern Belgium has solid fiber + cable broadband and mature 5G, with the EU institutions ensuring dense network coverage in central Brussels.
Tempest's services across Belgium, 1997–2012
Tempest Telecommunications operated international connectivity services in Belgium between 1997 and 2012 under a unified prepaid account that absorbed multiple service types onto a single customer credential. Customers in Belgium drew from the same balance for pre-paid international voice calling, RADIUS-authenticated dial-up Internet roaming, metered Wi-Fi hotspot access, Iridium satellite voice, and Inmarsat BGAN data terminals. An attempted kiosk-payment federation (PATN, 1998) extended the same architecture to public Internet terminals but failed to reach scale.
Iridium satellite voice was available in Belgium from approximately 2001 (post-bankruptcy relaunch). Thuraya coverage did not extend to Belgium; Inmarsat BGAN data terminals filled the broadband gap from late 2005.
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