Belgium’s IBPT found that customers who accept whatever their operator offers at renewal, instead of checking if they still need the extra data, lose hundreds of euros a year. The Netherlands’ ACM went further and put a number on it: 79% of fixed internet contracts and 60% of mobile contracts are “dormant” – past their initial period, and costing their holders up to 250EUR a year more than a fresh contract would. France’s ARCEP found a paradox: 89.4% of mobile plans now carry no commitment at all, yet portability fell by a quarter in one year. And the UK’s Ofcom has spent a decade building a whole vocabulary around this – the “loyalty penalty” – priced at up to 1,114GBP a year per household across mobile, broadband and other services.

Four markets, one pattern: customers who don’t switch are subsidising the ones who do. Until recently, most operators could simply count on that.

Why this matters more than it looks

It is easy to file this under consumer-protection news. That would miss the point. What these four regulators are showing, together, is a structural feature of incumbent economics. Acquisition discounts need funding. Back-book customers on old tariffs provide it. This is not a pricing mistake by one operator. It is close to the operating model of scale telecom in mature markets.

That changes the picture for anyone who isn’t a scale incumbent.

First, inertia is now measured and named. It is no longer a private inefficiency operators can manage on their own schedule. Second, and more useful strategically: the very thing that has protected incumbent margins for years can now work against them.

From consumer protection to competitive weapon

MVNOs and alternative operators have usually treated churn and switching friction as a threat. The pattern above suggests a different move: treat anti-inertia as a selling point, not a cost to manage.

In practice, that means a few things.

Make leaving easy, and say so. Regulators are moving toward mandatory end-of-contract notices, best-tariff alerts and easier switching. An operator who already does this earns trust that a low price alone can’t buy. For an operator built around solving one specific problem well, visible fairness on exit is cheap to deliver and hard to fake.

Build onboarding for switchers, not just new customers. Every dormant contract flagged by ACM, every out-of-contract customer flagged by Ofcom, every non-switcher counted by ARCEP is a named prospect. The winners won’t be the cheapest. They’ll be the ones who make switching itself painless: number portability handled end to end, no penalty to navigate, one clear page instead of a forty-page tariff sheet.

Compete on the metric regulators are watching. If the direction of travel is mandatory comparison and proactive notification, an operator built on transparency from day one is compliant by design. That’s a story worth telling.

From best practice to hard rule

The four regulators are not at the same stage, and that gap is useful. Belgium and the Netherlands are in guidance mode: publishing data, naming the bias, encouraging better information, with enforcement building slowly. The UK has already moved to binding rules: mandatory notifications, a ban on inflation-linked price rises since January 2025, and a new Consumer Hub pushing switching data straight to consumers. France sits in between, with no mandate yet but a regulator visibly worried about falling portability.

Read together, this looks less like four separate policies and more like a staggered rollout of the same expectation across Europe. What Belgium and the Netherlands are doing today looks like where the UK stood a few years back. Operators who wait for their own regulator to catch up will end up building under pressure. Operators who build now are simply early.

The bottom line

The “loyalty penalty” that regulators frame as a consumer problem is, from an operator’s chair, a market with a price tag already attached in every country that has bothered to measure it. For an MVNO or a niche alternative operator, that’s not background noise. It’s a target list, a story to tell, and a hedge against regulation that’s coming either way.

Sources & reference points

• IBPT/BIPT :” La passivité des utilisateurs de téléphonie mobile peut leur coûter des centaines d’euros: www.ibpt.be
• ARCEP :” Observatoire des marchés des communications électroniques, T4 2025 (portability and no-commitment plan data): www.arcep.fr
• ACM (Netherlands) :” ACM: telecomaanbieders moeten consumenten duidelijker en transparanter voorlichten over vast internet: www.acm.nl
• ACM (Netherlands) :” Marktbeschouwing telecommarkt 2024 (dormant contract data : 79% fixed, 60% mobile): www.acm.nl
• Ofcom (UK) :” Consumer Hub launch and switching/money-saving guidance (2026): www.ofcom.org.uk
• Smart Data Council / UK Government : loyalty penalty estimate across mobile, broadband and mortgages : reporting via techradar.com
• Ofcom :” Ban on inflation-linked mid-contract price rises, effective January 2025: www.ofcom.org.uk

The post The Loyalty Penalty Isn’t a UK Problem — It’s a European Business Model appeared first on AskGreg.

From BNetzA to the ACM — what each regulator actually allows, and why going direct is still the safer route

In August, Germany’s BNetzA — the federal network agency — published a notice reaffirming the legal framework for reselling geographic and mobile numbers, after uncovering chains of unauthorized resellers.
It’s not an isolated case. Across Europe, number resale is a topic regulators watch closely — and regulate far more tightly than many operators building their market entry around a local intermediary tend to assume.

I checked, country by country, what’s actually allowed in Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The results are instructive.Germany: the warning shot

BNetzA’s Mitteilung 90/2026 doesn’t create new law — it reaffirms that the existing framework applies, after uncovering unauthorized reseller chains for geographic and mobile numbers. A clear signal: regulatory scrutiny on numbering is tightening, not loosening.

France: sub-allocation is the exception, not the rule

Arcep‘s text is blunt (§2.2.3 of the annex to decision n° 2018-0881, amended in 2021): “operators allocated telephone numbering resources may not make them available, in whole or in part, to other operators.” Only two exceptions exist: resources already made available before 31 July 2018, and narrow sector-specific carve-outs for geographic numbers and extended-length mobile numbers — reserved for a declared operator acting as depositary, and only for resources the depositor was itself directly allocated. In every case, the original allottee stays responsible for all obligations, and number portability must remain guaranteed.

Belgium: sub-allocation exists, but no resale chains

The Royal Decree of 27 April 2007 (Art. 5) lets a number holder “make available” numbers to another operator — under strict procedural conditions: prior notification to the BIPT, proof of agreement between the parties, the depositary’s identity reported to the regulator. The original holder stays responsible for all legal and regulatory obligations. Here’s the key point: the operator put in possession cannot, in turn, make that capacity available to yet another company — unless it can prove the ban would make an existing or planned service impossible, and submit the contract for the Institute’s approval. A full transfer of the capacity (change of holder) must also be justified by something beyond the mere transfer itself, and requires the Institute’s authorization (Art. 5 §3) — a de facto anti-speculation clause. Article 9 settles the rest: numbering capacity can never become property, nor be protected by any intellectual property right. In short: operator-to-operator sub-allocation exists; resale chains don’t. Even this legitimate route runs through a dedicated BIPT notification form — this isn’t a casual arrangement between two private companies.

Luxembourg: the strictest rule on paper — and a real case to prove it

The ILR‘s stated principle is blunt: numbering resources “may not be transferred, assigned, or made available to any third party other than end users” (Règlement ILR/14/174 of 14 July 2014, on numbering). This isn’t a theoretical clause: on 27 March 2026, the ILR sanctioned DIDWW Ireland Limited (Decision ILR/T26/3) precisely for assigning and making available to third parties Luxembourg numbering resources. A telling detail on top of it: a consultants’ report commissioned by the ILR itself flags lingering ambiguity around the rules for supplying numbers to commercial resellers, and recommends clarifying them — a sign the regulator wants to tighten this area, not loosen it.

The Netherlands: the more flexible exception — but not a free-for-all

The Telecommunicatiewet works on two levels. Article 4.9 lets a number holder (“nummerhouder”) put numbers to use by a third party (“in gebruik geven”), provided it’s done “in a non-discriminatory and transparent manner, using objective criteria” — the holder stays responsible for the numbers being used lawfully. Article 4.6 goes further: on the joint request of the holder and a third party, the ACM can approve a full transfer of the allocation itself. It’s the most flexible route in the group — but it isn’t unregulated: objective criteria, ongoing accountability, and for certain designated number categories, Article 4.9 explicitly bans sub-letting down the chain.

At a glance

The common thread

With the Netherlands as the one partial exception, the European trend points one way: restrict resale and hold the original allottee accountable. For an operator that actually wants to establish itself in a market — not just route traffic through it — the safer route, and often the faster one over time, is to request its own number blocks directly from the local regulator and set up local interconnection, rather than depend on a fragile, legally exposed sub-allocation chain.

Where AskGreg comes in

This is exactly the path I help operators navigate: requesting number blocks, setting up local interconnection, staying compliant across jurisdictions (BIPT, Arcep, ILR, ACM, BNetzA…). For an operator or MVNO looking to enter Benelux, France, or beyond properly, it’s a far more solid foundation than a reseller chain you don’t control.

Happy to talk if you’re planning an entry into one of these markets.

The post Reselling Numbers in Europe: A Market Far More Regulated Than You Would Think appeared first on AskGreg.