Belgium - several bright spots in this year’s performance

Belgium climbs up two places to rank 15th on the Connectivity Scorecard 2010, helped by a strong performance in the business segment and a respectable score in consumer infrastructure sub-category.

The country has its strongest performance in terms of business usage and skills. Here, it does particularly well in terms of the proportion of graduates and researchers in the workforce and the proportion of businesses with their own websites. Belgian businesses also boast of high ICT capital investments, good broadband uptake and robust deployment of Ethernet and IP infrastructure. Belgium’s household broadband penetration is at par with most other relatively affluent Western European economies, while its network speeds are faster.

With the exception of a high proportion of frequent internet users, Belgium’s scores on other aspects of consumer usage and skills are not in line with its strong broadband penetration and internet usage statistics. Belgium also offers a mixed performance in the government segment, with high scores in infrastructure but weak performance in usage and skills.

Belgium exhibits a lot of potential but has a long way to go before it can catch up with its better-performing neighbors such as the Netherlands and the UK.

Belgium’s Connectivity Performance by Scorecard Component