To carry out its missions, BIPT has several means of action:
- it takes administrative decisions that may result in the imposition of obligations on natural persons and companies;
- it may impose administrative sanctions;
- it issues opinions at its own initiative or at the Minister's request;
- it monitors compliance with the sector-specific legislation in the areas mentioned above and is authorised to conduct studies by collecting all useful information or by conducting public consultations;
- it may act as a mediator in case of disputes.
Surveillance
In case of complaints or when it observes problems on the market, BIPT carries out specific checks concerning the behaviour of operators on the residential market or has them carried out, in order to verify if operators comply with the applicable regulations.
BIPT has thus verified whether the invoices did indeed contain all the required information, whether the operators' general terms and conditions complied with the law and whether information destined for disabled users was available.
Penalties
When operators do not meet their obligations, BIPT may impose sanctions upon them, particularly in the form of administrative penalties.
Guidelines regarding the calculation of the amount of the administrative fines imposed by BIPT.
Concretely, BIPT has already imposed fines:
- for misinformation regarding a contract amendment, to:
- for shortcomings in the invoices, to:
- for illegal provisions in the terms and conditions, to:
- Dommel (2014)
- for lack of cooperation with the Office of the Ombudsman for Telecommunications, to:
- Lycamobile (2017)
- for non-compliance with the European rules regarding roaming, to:
- Lycamobile (2017)
- for non-compliance with the regulation on the prior identification of end-users of prepaid cards, to:
- Proximus (2020)
- Telenet (2020)
- Lycamobile (2019)
- Lycamobile (2018)
- Lycamobile (2017)
- for not having correctly completed the register of premium rate numbers
- due to shortcomings in the Easy Switch regulation, to:
- Telenet (2023)