af@sei.ucl.ac.be (Alain FONTAINE (Postmaster - NAD)) (09/14/89)
Telecommunications in Belgium - Part 1 - General information Yes, there are telephones (and other communicating gadgets) in this remote part of the world. For those who were not loving geography too much while in school, Belgium is in Europe and its capital is Brussels. Like in many European countries, the telephone and many other comm- related things are a state monopoly. The operating agency is called RTT, which means 'Regie des Telegraphes et des Telephones' - that should be transparent even for non-French speaking people. Unlike what happens in many other European countries, it has nothing in common with the postal service. The monopoly used to be very very strong. Just knowing that the voice was being transported by electrical signals may have been an infraction. The user was expected to use his/her finger to dial, to speak into one end of the thing and listen to the other end, and that's it (I nearly forgot : and to pay the bill within 10 days, including when in holidays, or be disconnected a few days later). Telephone intruments were wired directly into a wall box, without any form of connector. Everything was provided by the RTT, except some specialized things like high speed modems, which then had to be certified by them (and also the terminal equipement connected to the modem), a procedure that could last for a long, long time... Things have been relaxed somewhat : now telephones are attached to the network using connectors, and the user is even expected to bring back his telephone to a commercial center in case it needs to be repaired or if moving. There are no plans I know of to allow alternate carriers, but the terminal equipment market is now open, except for the first instrument on a line. Every item must still be type-approved, but a new agency, distinct from the RTT, is being created to perform the tests in order to insure more fairness. The user may also extend his interior installation himself, using approved wire and components. That's surely enough for today. If there is some interest in more details, I could write further short articles on subjects like : numbering and dialing, tariffs, RTT procurement and industrial policy (juicy), data communications, ISDN. Disclaimer : my shortsighted views only.... [Moderator's Note: Please send along future installments in this series. We've had very little discussion of Belgium in the Digest to date. PT]
sandy47@ucsco.ucsc.edu (90784000) (09/20/89)
I was stationed in The Netherlands (Maastricht) in the US Air Force during 1966-1969 as part of a radio relay maintenance team. We had two microwave sites in Germany, two in The Netherlands, and two in Belgium, in addition to a maintenance site at Roclenge sur Geer, Belgium. We constantly used the telephone system to contact all six sites from Belgium and I learned inter- national dialing early in life. It was less than 15 minutes driving between the Maastricht site (located in a Dutch PTT tower) to the maintenance site in Belgium, but was an international call. What made it particularly bad was that our site was located on the dividing line between the Flemish (Dutch) and Walloon (French) speaking sections of Belgium. Telephone maintenance was all but impossible and winter conditions at our sites in the Ardenne Mountains made it worse. We had all of the sites linked by HF radio as a backup, but often we would drive to Maastricht across the border to use the microwave communications channels connecting the sites to make reliable contact! Our customers were all military as part of the Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT) network and we essentially duplicated the existing HF/VHF radio links and PTT/RTT networks. As I was leaving Europe in 1969, satellite networks were taking over much of the communications requirements. Belgium had to be one of the more interesting countries in Europe at that time, since they were just instituting vehicle drivers licenses in 1969 (as I recall) and most drivers were grandfathered into the system. The others had to either take a written exam _or_ a road test! Belgium also had one of the highest accident rates in Europe then. Thanks for the reminder!