Belgium’s public telephone company Belgacom SA has low quality services, major staff problems and takes twice as long to install a telephone as firms in neighbouring countries, its chairman Benoit Remiche admitted to the Economic & Social Council of the French-speaking Walloon Region, adding that Belgacom was the most heavily indebted public telephone operator in Europe, and had invested the least in the past 10 years; according to Reuter he was also sceptical about a recent 1992 profit forecast of about $305m – in 1991, Belgacom made net profit of $268m on turnover of $2,900m; Belgacom is trying to restructure before other phone companies enter the underdeveloped Belgian phone market, where the number of phones per 100 inhabitant is only just above Third World levels at 39.3, compared with 50 in France and 46 in the Netherlands; moreover cellular mobile phones are in their infancy; Belgacom keeps a monopoly on most telephone services, for which it is committed to pay the state a maximum $407m a year over the five years to 1996.
