5G home internet or a fixed line in Belgium: which wins?

Yes, 5G can replace a fixed line, on three conditions: you are not eligible for fibre, you stay under 300 GB a month, and you accept depending on a mast shared with the whole neighbourhood. In Belgium only four offers match that description. They run on three different networks and range from €7 to €60 a month.

What exactly is 5G home internet?

A SIM card in a router, and nothing else.

The technique has a name — FWA, for Fixed Wireless Access. A box in your home picks up the mobile network exactly as a smartphone would, then redistributes it over Wi-Fi. No phone line, no coaxial cable, no trench in the pavement.

So this is not fixed internet in any network sense: it is a mobile subscription dressed up as a box. The consequence is immediate, and it governs everything else. Your throughput does not depend on a cable that belongs to you alone, but on how many people are connected to the same mast at the same moment.

Who sells fixed wireless in Belgium, and on which network?

Four brands, three host networks. The table below aligns the public price lists as recorded on 23 August 2026, monthly price after any promotion, with the network that actually carries the signal.

Two names need a word of explanation if you are new to Belgium. TADAAM is a Telenet subsidiary and rides Telenet's mobile network, sold to consumers under the BASE brand — a textbook case of one network wearing several labels, the pattern this site exists to document. DIGI is the newest entrant, running its own 5G network in the zones it has built out and falling back on national roaming elsewhere.

Proximus, the incumbent, sells no comparable consumer offer: home internet there runs over fibre, VDSL or cable, never over a mobile mast.

You are not buying 5G, you are buying a cap

This is the point nobody writes down, and it is the key to the whole table.

Look at the TADAAM range. Standard, Premium, Platinum: 30, 50 and 100 Mbit/s, at €40, €50 and €60 a month. Three plans, one network, one modem, one mast at the end of the street. What changes between €40 and €60 is neither technology nor coverage — it is a software slider deciding how many megabits you are allowed to take. You are not paying €20 more for a better connection: you are paying €20 to have the brake eased on the one you already had.

The same logic runs across brands. DIGI caps at 100 Mbit/s for €7; TADAAM caps at the same figure for €60. That is €53 a month, €636 over twelve months, for an identical advertised speed and the same 300 GB quota. What those €53 actually buy is a bundle of thirty channels, a modem delivered by post and no technician visit — three defensible things, but worth naming rather than mistaking for performance.

Three networks, fifteen labels: on fixed wireless too, the price comes from the label, not from the mast.

What does the first year really cost?

Setup fees included, and with no introductory offer, here is what you will have paid after twelve months.

Two remarks on that table, because a total never speaks for itself.

The first concerns the thirteenth month, this site's standing obsession. DIGI has announced it will not raise its prices in 2026: the €7 of month one is still €7 in month thirteen, which remains an exception on this market. The second concerns Orange's 150 GB, which are not really 150: 50 GB are usable during the day, the other 100 between 6 pm and 6 am and at weekends. For a household working from home, the real Monday-to-Friday allowance is three times smaller than the brochure figure.

Then there is the wired benchmark, at €23 a month — the cheapest internet subscription recorded on the Belgian market by Selectra's comparison tool on 23 August 2026, under the Scarlet label, on the Proximus network. It costs more than DIGI and less than everything else, with no quota and no 100 Mbit/s ceiling. If your address qualifies, the fixed wireless question largely disappears.

When does it genuinely replace a fixed line?

When there is nothing else, and when usage stays moderate.

Fixed wireless exists for the addresses wired networks do not reach: hamlets in the Ardennes, streets where fibre will not arrive for years, buildings where the connection depends on a co-ownership board that never answers. In those situations there is no comparison to make, only an alternative to tired VDSL. DIGI says so plainly: its €7 offer is sold only at addresses its own fibre does not serve.

It also wins on a more ordinary front — the temporary. Student rooms, shared flats, holiday homes, the gap between two moves. A modem you unplug and plug in elsewhere beats a twenty-four-month contract and a technician appointment to reschedule.

It loses, however, as soon as usage gets dense. A household streaming television, backing photos up to the cloud and running two video calls a day passes 300 GB without noticing. Add evening congestion, and Friday at 8 pm bears no resemblance to Tuesday at 10 am.

Six things to check before cancelling your line

None of these checks costs money, and each one has already cancelled a subscription.

• Fibre eligibility, first. The BIPT fibre atlas answers before any commercial map does. If your street is connectable, the question is settled.
• Mobile coverage at your exact address, not in your municipality. A municipal percentage says nothing about your living room: we set out how to read the regulator's atlas properly in our municipality-by-municipality survey.
• Upload speed, not just download. Price lists almost never show upload, yet it decides the quality of your video calls and your backups.
• The public IP address. Ask whether the offer provides one: most wireless access runs through shared addressing, which rules out port forwarding — so no externally reachable NAS, no security camera, no game server.
• Behaviour beyond the quota. "Unlimited" with fair use at 300 GB does not mean unlimited: ask what speed applies after you pass it, and have it put in writing.
• What you lose on TV and telephony. The set-top box from a wired bundle, regional channels, the historic landline number: none of it follows automatically.

Outdoor antenna, router, repeater: what Belgian law allows

Legality comes before shopping advice here, because the line is not where most people think it is.

The outdoor antenna DIGI mounts on your facade raises no issue: the operator installs it, on its own frequencies, with its own hardware. Just plan for a cable through the wall — a hole to drill, which means the landlord's agreement if you rent, and exactly what TADAAM's posted box avoids.

The repeater bought online is another matter. In Belgium a mobile repeater may not be used without the agreement of the operator whose frequencies it amplifies, and a CE mark changes nothing. Officers of the IBPT/BIPT, the Belgian telecoms regulator, hold judicial police powers: they can seize a device for which no authorisation is produced and file a report with the public prosecutor. The right move is the one the regulator itself recommends — report the reception problem to your operator, stating where and when it occurs, and let them propose a fix.

As for the router, the question barely arises on these offers: DIGI and TADAAM supply theirs, and Orange charges €39 for its modem. If you must buy a SIM-capable router anyway, the ranges actually sold in Belgium and the wider EU can be counted on one hand — TP-Link, Netgear, ZTE, Huawei, Zyxel. We have tested none of them in the field, so we quote neither model nor price here: the only check that matters is that the device supports the bands genuinely deployed in Belgium.

What this comparison does not tell you

We do not test these offers at home. This table aligns public price lists and regulator data, recorded on 23 August 2026 — not measurements taken in your living room. The only figure that will matter to you is the one at your address, on a Friday evening.

The reasoning is the same as for a mobile plan: first the network that reaches you, then the label that bills it most cheaply. That is exactly the order our 5G plans ranking is built on, host network shown next to every price, and which the comparison table lets you sort row by row. On DIGI's network in particular, we have looked elsewhere at how good the newcomer really is — and the answer depends heavily on your municipality.

Sources — Selectra Belgium, "Internet 5G fixe en Belgique : une alternative à la fibre ?", updated 22 August 2026 (DIGI, TADAAM and Orange offers, behaviour beyond quota); CallMePower, TADAAM page, verified 20 May 2026 and updated 23 July 2026 (Standard / Premium / Platinum range at €40, €50 and €60, Telenet 4G network under BASE coverage, €25 eSIM mobile plan); Test Achats, "5G Home Internet: DIGI offers fixed internet over 5G at €7 a month"; L'Avenir, 21 January 2026, on the outdoor antenna and the €40 installation; Orange Belgium, Home Flybox page (150 GB including 100 off-peak, up to 210 Mbit/s, €39 modem); BIPT, indoor mobile coverage and the repeater regime; BIPT, fibre optic atlas; Selectra comparison tool as at 23 August 2026 for the cheapest wired subscription (Scarlet, €23 a month, Proximus network). Official brand pages: TADAAM and Orange Home Flybox. No link on this page is monetised.