Mobile plan price increase: your way out

An increase in the tariffs applying to your contract gives you the right to terminate it with no fee, and that window stays open for three months after the operator notifies you. The scheduled end of a promotion opens nothing: the date and the new amount were in the contract from day one.

A tariff increase and the end of a promotion are not handled the same way

Two events, two regimes.

In the first, the operator changes the price of a contract already signed. In the second, it applies the price that had been in the particular terms from the start, on the date written there. On a bank statement, the two look exactly alike. In law they have nothing in common, and that confusion filled a good half of my three years in the cancellations department of a Belgian virtual operator.

When can you terminate free of charge after an increase?

For three months from the notification.

The BIPT puts it plainly on its note about modification of the contract by the operator: if your operator raises the tariffs that apply to your contract, you have the right to terminate it free of charge, and that free termination remains possible for three months after the operator has notified you of its intention to raise the price. The rule also covers a fixed-term contract on which an early termination fee would normally be payable.

Three months. Not fifteen days, not until the increase takes effect.

Almost everyone believes this period to be far shorter than it is, and the mistake has a direct cost: a customer who thinks he has missed the deadline stays another twenty-three months on a contract he could have left for nothing. For other changes to the contract, the ones that do not touch the price, the operator has to give at least one month's notice, and the same free exit opens, with the same three-month window on a fixed-term contract.

What must the operator's letter contain?

The exact nature of the change, its date of entry into force, and a mention of your right to terminate free of charge.

That last point is the one to look for first when you open the letter or the email. An operator that announces an increase without recalling the exit door does not make that door disappear: it has failed its information duty, and that is an argument for the file if the discussion later turns sour.

Write down the date you received it, not the date printed on the document. The two often differ by several days, and yours is the one that gives you a provable starting point.

This duty does not depend on the brand. It weighs the same on the four operators running their own mobile network in Belgium, Proximus, Orange Belgium, Telenet with its BASE brand and DIGI Belgium, and on the virtual operators leasing one of those networks, Mobile Vikings or Scarlet for instance. The regime comes from electronic communications law, not from the operator's commercial terms.

How do you leave free of charge, step by step?

Five steps, and the order matters more than the speed.

1. Date the notification and archive it. Screenshot of the email, photo of the letter, date of receipt written down. Without that starting point, the three-month window cannot be demonstrated.
2. Check the nature of the increase. Reread the indexation clause in your general terms. An increase that follows the consumer price index and is provided for in the contract opens no right at all, and it is better to know that before writing.
3. Subscribe with the new operator before terminating. It is the new operator that triggers number portability and ends the old contract. Terminating yourself first means losing the number, permanently.
4. Invoke the modification in writing, and name it. State the date of the notification, the amount before and after, the line number, and the sentence requesting termination with no fee on the ground of the tariff change. A timestamped email is enough.
5. Get the handset balance quantified before you go. Ask for the amount still due in the current month, in writing. If nobody can say it, push: that figure exists in your amortisation schedule.

What does leaving at month thirteen actually cost?

Nothing on the service, €274.08 on the phone.

I put the figures on a dated case, using the reference handset I have been working with on this site since August: a €599 device, a €1 down payment, linear financing over twenty-four months, that is €24.92 a month. After thirteen instalments, €323.92 has been repaid. So €274.08 falls due the day you leave, whether the exit is free or not.

That last row deserves a word, because it is the real hole in this market. None of the operators whose rate card I recorded on 21 September 2026 publishes, next to the introductory price, the amount charged once the promotional period ends. So the cell stays empty here, and I do not estimate it: an invented figure carrying the authority of a table would be worse than an empty cell.

The calendar, on the other hand, can be calculated. A notice received on 21 September for an increase taking effect on 1 November leaves the exit window open until 21 December, that is fifty days after the new price started being billed. Those fifty days are exactly what a customer loses by believing the door shuts on the date of effect.

Why does indexation open no right at all?

Because you accepted it when you signed, so it is not a modification.

This is the most unpleasant distinction in the Belgian mechanism, and the one that produces the most anger: the amount debited rises without the door opening. Four situations close the free exit, and you have to rule them out one by one before writing to the operator.

• Indexation on the consumer price index, as soon as that indexation is provided for in your contract.
• A modification resulting from a change in a legal provision, rather than from a commercial decision by the operator.
• A set of changes that are exclusively and manifestly to your advantage, more data at the same price for instance.
• The scheduled end of a promotion, whose date and follow-on amount were in the particular terms on the day you signed.

In that last case, by far the most common, a way out still exists: it runs through the six-month rule, which allows a Belgian telecommunications contract to be terminated with no early termination fee beyond the sixth month. The mechanism is set out in the mobile contract glossary.

The handset balance stays due, even when the exit is free

The BIPT says it for every case of termination, without exception: a bundled device that you are repaying through your subscription remains payable at its value in the amortisation schedule. The month-by-month table is in the article on the 24-month credit behind the €1 phone.

What if the operator refuses the free termination?

Write once, then go to the free authority.

A refusal happens regularly, and it almost always takes the same shape: customer service reclassifies the increase as indexation, or replies that the deadline has passed. Bring out the notification date you archived, the three-month window, and ask for a reasoned written answer. If it does not come, or if it does not hold, the Telecommunications Ombudsman Service handles the file free of charge, and the BIPT publishes the framework applying to the termination of Belgian contracts.

To make that comparison, the comparison tool puts the plans side by side and the mobile plan ranking orders them on their twenty-four-month cost, with the handset counted separately.

Sources

• BIPT, the Belgian telecommunications regulator, modification of the contract by the operator, the three-month free termination window and its exceptions, consulted on 21 September 2026.
• BIPT, termination of a telecommunications contract and the regime of the early termination fee, consulted on 21 September 2026.
• BIPT, bundled device and the value still due in the amortisation schedule in the event of termination, consulted on 21 September 2026.
• Telecommunications Ombudsman Service, free handling of disputes between consumers and Belgian operators, consulted on 21 September 2026.
• Rate cards published by Belgian operators, recorded on 21 September 2026: none of them publishes the price applied after the promotional period.
• Amortisation schedule built on a device with a €599 reference price, a €1 down payment and linear financing over 24 months, recorded 24 August 2026.