MVNOs: are you served last at peak hours in Belgium?

No public document proves that a Belgian MVNO, a mobile virtual network operator that rents someone else's masts, is served after its host operator's customers at peak hours. The traffic management policies published on the Proximus and Orange networks describe an equal split between the users of a congested mast. Throttling does exist, though, and it is written down: a speed cap, set plan by plan.

Two published policies, and neither separates brands

The idea is everywhere. A CallMePower guide updated on 14 July 2026 says that some MVNOs may see their speed slowed compared with the host operator's direct customers at a concert or in a packed station, and advises checking the point in the terms and conditions. So we went looking for the clause.

On the Proximus network, it does not exist in that form. The network's traffic management policy, reproduced on the JIM Mobile support page in its 7 November 2024 version, sets three rules. Voice goes before data when one mast carries both. The bandwidth reserved for data is split equally between the simultaneous users of that mast. No application is favoured or slowed. One exception appears in the text: when the mast is saturated, customers who have taken the professional Business Priority option get a larger share. The document names neither Scarlet, nor Mobile Vikings, nor yoin, nor any other label on the network, and Scarlet's legal notices page, checked on 9 October 2026, points to a single document titled "Gestion du trafic internet fixe et mobile sur le réseau de Proximus": one policy for the network, not one per brand.

On the Orange network, same finding. hey!, the group's entry-level brand, publishes on its quality of service page the Orange Belgium statement on mobile traffic management, in a file dated May 2025. Capacity is shared fairly between all users, whatever the application. Voice calls take priority over internet traffic. Calls made through WhatsApp or Teams are treated as ordinary traffic. Not one line separates an Orange customer from a hey! customer.

For the Telenet/BASE network, we found no equivalent document accessible on 9 October 2026. That silence proves nothing, in either direction.

Does European law allow a queue per subscription?

Per brand, hardly. Per speed tier, yes, provided it is written down.

EU Regulation 2015/2120 requires internet access providers to treat all traffic equally. Management measures remain allowed if they are transparent, proportionate and based on objective technical requirements, never on commercial considerations. In Belgium, the law of 13 June 2005 also obliges each operator to publish its practices, and that is the very obligation the Orange statement cites.

The European text does not explicitly settle the case of two differently priced subscriptions on a saturated mast. The Finnish regulator did, in an opinion of 10 April 2018 that remains the most precise reading available in Europe. A network may give different weights to subscriptions in different speed categories, but the gap in weight cannot exceed the gap in speed sold: a 100 Mbps subscription weighs at most twice a 50 Mbps one. Two subscriptions in the same category must be treated equally, including when one belongs to another operator hosted on the network. The mechanism cannot be used to favour business customers. And the contract must explain to the customer how congestion affects their speed.

That opinion does not bind Belgium. It shows what a European regulator considers defensible: a priority tied to the label would be commercial discrimination, a weighting tied to the speed purchased would be acceptable if it appeared in the contract. To our knowledge the IBPT, Belgium's telecom regulator (BIPT in Dutch), has published nothing equivalent, and no Belgian contract we have read describes such a weighting.

Belgian throttling is written in the tariff sheet

This is where two SIM cards on the same network differ. It does not depend on the time of day. It is permanent, it has a number, and it appears in the contract summary handed over before any order. Belgium has three mobile networks, Proximus, Orange and Telenet, plus DIGI under construction, and every brand below runs on one of them.

Speeds: Proximus plans page and Scarlet legal notices checked on 9 October 2026, L'Avenir of 17 and 20 August 2026 for Mobile Vikings, BASE, Telenet and DIGI, our own check of 15 September 2026 for yoin, whose plans page does not display the cap. These are contractual maximums under optimal conditions, not measured speeds. Prices are those after the promotion ends.

Two gaps stand out. On Proximus masts, the maximum speed runs from 50 Mbps to 1 Gbps, a ratio of 1 to 20, while the price goes from €25 to €49.99, a ratio of 1 to 2. On Telenet's, the group's own brand, BASE, stops at 150 Mbps while Telenet advertises up to 1 Gbps: a ratio of 1 to 6.7 inside a single company.

The Orange network is the exception. The hey! page repeats the speeds advertised by Orange, 400 Mbps on 4G and 1 Gbps on 5G, with no tier by plan. At €5 a month, hey! mobile S is, on paper, less throttled than BASE at €15.

The cap is therefore a commercial decision by the brand or its owner. It has nothing to do with MVNO status: Mobile Vikings belongs to Proximus, BASE to Telenet, and they carry the lowest caps on their networks. The difference between a tenant and an in-house brand is set out in our article on MVNOs and budget brands.

At 6 pm, is a 1 Gbps cap better than a 50 Mbps cap?

No.

A cap only bites if the network can deliver more. Yet the IBPT measurement campaign run from late August to mid-November 2025, whose results on roads and aboard trains the regulator publishes, gives average download speeds of 94.4 Mbps on the Proximus network, 83.7 on the Orange network and 70 on the Telenet/BASE network, as reported by CallMePower. Every cap in the table sits above those averages, except one. The 50 Mbps of Mobile Vikings Unlimited Basic is the only Belgian throttle you feel in broad daylight, on an idle mast.

On a loaded mast the reasoning flips. Take an order of magnitude, to fix ideas and without claiming to describe a real mast: a sector able to deliver 300 Mbps at the moment sixty phones are downloading at once. The equal-split rule gives each of them 5 Mbps. The customer paying €49.99 and the customer paying €25 get the same thing, and neither comes anywhere near their cap.

Paying for a higher maximum speed therefore buys the hours when the network is empty. Not the ones when it is full.

Scarlet, yoin, Lycamobile: three documented gaps, none of them a priority

Differences between a label and its host do exist. They are of another kind.

The comparison site Astel, in its network file updated on 28 July 2026, writes that Scarlet, yoin and DIGI SIM cards do not connect to every Proximus mast. Fewer reachable masts means weaker reception in some places and a phone that transmits harder, so a battery that drains faster. The same file states that 4G and 5G speed is throttled for Lycamobile customers, on the Telenet/BASE network, without giving a figure. And Scarlet does not offer 5G: its customers stay on the 4G layer of the Proximus network, with a maximum speed the brand itself estimates at 129 Mbps.

None of these three facts is a queue. For the customer the effect can look like one all the same: a card confined to 4G, or cut off from part of the masts, slows down earlier when the neighbourhood logs on.

Why does the connection slow down in the evening, whatever the label?

Because a mast is a shared resource, and the evening is when everyone calls on it. The Orange statement says so plainly: despite investment, saturation remains possible, with slower browsing, degraded video and, exceptionally, calls that fail to connect. Astel notes for its part that fixed connections over 4G or 5G slow down in the evening depending on the load in the area. Add indoor reception, which drops as soon as you step away from the window: the mechanism is described in our article on 5G indoors.

How do you tell whether the slowness comes from the mast or from your label?

Five checks, in this order. None needs any equipment.

• Read the network code shown by the phone: 206 01 for Proximus, 206 10 for Orange, 206 20 for Telenet/BASE, 206 12 for DIGI. The full list of attachments is in our table of Belgian brands by network.
• Measure twice in the same spot, one evening between 6 pm and 9 pm, then one weekday morning. A speed that collapses in the evening and returns in the morning points to the load on the mast.
• Compare with a customer of the host operator, side by side, in the same minute, checking that both phones show the same network generation. A constant gap between two cards on 5G would deserve a letter to your brand. A gap between a card on 4G and a card on 5G proves nothing.
• Find the maximum speed in your contract summary. If your daytime measurements hit that figure, you have found your throttle.
• Check that 5G is switched on for your plan: it costs €1 a month as an option on the two smallest yoin plans and does not exist on Scarlet, both on the Proximus network.

If the third check reveals a clear and repeated gap, put it in writing to your brand, then to the Belgian telecoms ombudsman (Service de médiation pour les télécommunications). It would be, to our knowledge, the first documented case.

The three blind spots of this investigation

Wholesale contracts between a network operator and an independent MVNO, yoin, Mega, UNDO, Neibo or Lycamobile, are not public. The IBPT measures the three networks, never the labels one by one. And the regulator's net neutrality report for the period from 1 May 2025 to 30 April 2026, announced on 1 August 2026, could not be read in full for this article.

We have not taken out any of these plans or measured any speed: this page cross-checks the statements published by operators, European texts, the regulator's measurements and dated figures from the Belgian press and comparison sites. Plans sorted by their month-13 price, host network shown on every line, are in our 5G plan ranking.

Sources: JIM Mobile, support page reproducing the traffic management policy of the Proximus network, updated 7 November 2024; Scarlet, legal notices and traffic management statement, checked 9 October 2026; hey! Telecom, quality of service page and Orange Belgium statement on mobile traffic management, file dated May 2025, checked 9 October 2026; Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 on open internet access; Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority, opinion of 10 April 2018 on the allocation of radio resources among mobile subscriptions; IBPT, results of the 2025 test campaign on roads and aboard trains, figures as reported by CallMePower, "Meilleur réseau mobile" page updated 1 September 2026; CallMePower, "Qu'est-ce qu'un MVNO" guide, updated 14 July 2026; Astel, "Quel réseau utilise quel opérateur en Belgique", 28 July 2026; L'Avenir, articles of 17 August 2026 (Mobile Vikings) and 20 August 2026 (BASE speeds); Proximus, mobile plans page checked 9 October 2026; yoin, plans page checked 9 October 2026; CSA, announcement of 1 August 2026 of the IBPT net neutrality report. No link on this page is monetised.