Mobile plan: with or without a contract?

Between a mobile plan committed for twenty-four months and a SIM-only plan you can stop next month, the real difference is no longer the price of the service. It lies elsewhere: in what the commitment finances, and in what it takes to get out of it. On the Belgian rate card I checked on 24 August 2026, the cheapest plans on the market carry no contract — which completely reverses the sales argument I myself used for seven years behind a counter.

What does a 24-month commitment actually finance?

A phone, almost always. Plus the plan.

When I started in a shop in Namur, in 2013, commitment was justified by a discount on the service: you tie yourself in, the plan gets cheaper. That logic has melted away. Today, on Belgian rate cards, the price gap between a committed plan and a free one at comparable allowance is small, or even reversed — and it becomes plainly unfavourable as soon as you compare a committed incumbent brand with an operator selling without commitment.

What commitment still carries is the financing of the handset. The phone "for €1" is not a gift: it is the price of the device, possibly discounted, split into twenty-four instalments sitting alongside the plan. On the bill, the two lines are distinct. In the contract too. And that separation decides everything else.

What does each plan really cost over 24 months?

The only calculation that separates two offers fits into three numbers: the price for the first twelve months, the price applied from month thirteen, and the total.

Here is what the rate card checked on 24 August 2026 gives for a few Belgian plans, excluding any phone financing.

The right-hand column is the one to read. Between the no-contract entry plan and an incumbent's unlimited offer, the two-year gap exceeds €900 — for a reader who, in half the cases I see, uses under twenty gigabytes a month and therefore has no use for unlimited.

Why is the advertised price almost never the price paid?

Because it is time-limited without saying so. The figure in large type on the poster is, in the vast majority of cases, an introductory price valid for twelve months. The price actually billed from month thirteen sits in the specific terms.

I spent three years in the cancellations department of a Belgian virtual operator, answering calls that all began the same way: "my bill went up on its own". It had not gone up on its own. The promotion had ended, exactly on the date set in the contract, and nobody had read that date.

The order of magnitude, on Belgian unlimited plans, runs from €5 to €15 a month. Over the second year, that is €60 to €180. A plan advertised at €20 and billed €32 from month thirteen comes to €384 over two years: more than a competitor advertised at €25 and billed €25 throughout.

On what conditions can you cancel without a fee in Belgium?

Belgian telecoms law is more protective than most readers assume. An open-ended contract, or a fixed-term contract past six months of performance, can be cancelled without an early-termination fee.

Three clarifications, in the order in which they surprise people.

1. This covers the service, not the device. The balance of the financed handset remains due, in one payment. It is by far the leading cause of dispute I dealt with.
2. A discount conditional on the term may be clawed back. If the operator granted an advantage explicitly tied to the commitment, it can take it back. That is written in the specific terms, never on the poster.
3. You do not cancel yourself if you want to keep your number. It is the new operator that triggers portability and cancels the old contract on your behalf. Cancelling first means losing the number — I have watched customers find that out too late, and there is nothing to be done afterwards.

Should you take the phone with the plan or buy it outright?

Put the two totals side by side; it is the only method that holds.

On one side: the plan with handset over twenty-four months, device instalment included. On the other: the same data allowance as SIM only over twenty-four months, plus the outright Belgian retail price of the phone. In most cases I have recalculated, the second column is lower — and above all, it leaves the door open in month seven.

What changes depending on the operator you choose?

The network, and the service — not the law. Belgian protections on cancellation and portability apply to every operator active on the market, incumbent or virtual.

On the other hand, only four players run their own mobile infrastructure in Belgium: Proximus, Orange Belgium, Telenet/BASE and DIGI. Every other brand — Mobile Vikings, Scarlet, hey! — rents one of those four networks. Coverage is therefore the same as the host's; what can differ is traffic priority during local congestion and the breadth of roaming options.

That has one simple practical consequence: if you have no reception problem where you live and where you work, taking the cheapest brand on the same network is a trade-off with no downside. If you do have one, then and only then is the premium of a benchmark-coverage operator worth discussing.

What should you actually do before signing?

Three checks, in this order, and they take ten minutes.

Note your usage. Past six months, month by month, in the customer area. The allowance to aim for is that of the heaviest month, not the average.

Ask for the month-thirteen price in writing. In a shop as much as online. A spoken answer binds nobody, and it is the figure that decides the real cost.

Separate the plan from the phone. Have the handset balance still due at month twelve quantified. If the salesperson cannot say it, the contract does not say it clearly — and that alone is reason enough to look elsewhere.

To compare plans on these criteria, the comparison tool puts them side by side, and the mobile plan ranking orders them on the 24-month cost.

Sources

• BIPT, the Belgian telecoms regulator — framework applicable to telecoms contracts, accessed 24 August 2026.
• Telecommunications Ombudsman Service — free handling of disputes between consumers and Belgian operators, accessed 24 August 2026.
• FPS Economy — consumer rights in telecoms, accessed 24 August 2026.
• Rate cards published by Belgian operators and public market comparisons, checked 24 August 2026.