There is rarely ever loyalty in business — and Belgian cable television firm Telenet confirmed an unspoken truth this week.

These eight channels made way for 'progress'.

Telenet turned its back on faithful paying customers, reducing content without a corresponding cut in price.

This was in breach of contract signed with municipal councils. Minister for Consumer Affairs Freya van den Bossche has started an inquiry.

Adding oil to the fire, many consumers who wanted to retain the eight channels have been unable this week to obtain the obligatory CableTuner.

The supply problems left the public and retailers fuming — and with good reason.

And then Telenet made a sweeping gesture: the cable tuners were not for sale at all.

The EUR 49 paid to obtain one was instead classified as a 'guarantee'. When you return the tuner — even if it is after 30 years — you will be repaid the money.

Initially, a time period of three years had been written in the fine print, but public pressure and howls of protest by consumer watchdog Test-Aankoop have won Telenet concessions.

But the fact remains: two-thirds of TV viewers in Flanders were short-changed.

Consider also the 40,000 people left behind by progress.

Their crime: living in old apartments where Telenet considered it too expensive to upgrade the cable network to receive both digital and analogue television.

These were the low-income earners and the elderly, the least attractive consumers for a profit-driven digital business.

Progress has passed them by and they are left with the crumbs of analogue history.

And those supposedly on the other side of the digital divide, expats and everyday Flemish viewers in more modern buildings, have been left without global news broadcasters BBC World and CNN.

French-speakers lost France 3 and culture lovers lost Arte.

These were among the eight stations forced to go digital due also to cable capacity problems.

Perhaps Telenet thought eliminating these stations from the analogue line-up would convince more subscribers to opt for the more expensive digital service?

Consumers could buy the Digibox necessary to receive digital television for EUR 199, four times the price of the cable tuner.

Instead, many people simply opted for the status quo — analogue TV with a 'borrowed' cable tuner to retain a service they hadn't wanted disrupted.

Telenet's miscalculation of consumer willingness to fork out more left large numbers of people unable to obtain a cable tuner.

'Supply problems' meant retailers were left waiting for the first cable tuners, while others said they were supplied with too few, exhausting stocks within several days after the switch to digital television on 3 September.

Shops soon drew up waiting lists to assist clients. Progress, Telenet says.

Test-Aankoop received more than 200 complaints by mid-week, but Telenet was left in denial, boasting that consumers were primarily asking how they could switch to digital television.

And on the Telenet website, there are more retailers listed that can supply the digibox than there are retailers with a cable tuner.

Telenet denies the scarcity of cable tuners is a deliberate decision to direct consumers towards the digital world.

And yet distributors were also left wanting for information, not knowing whether they would ever receive the cable tuners they were supposed to 'sell'.

A Belgian newspaper sent an email query to Telenet on 2 September, but had not received a reply by Friday. An eight-minute wait on hold to Telenet's customer service line added to frustration.

"It is correct that there is a supply problem with the cable tuners," Telenet spokesman Stefan Coenjaerts eventually admitted.

The cable tuners are manufactured in Eastern Europe and Telenet said supply has been disrupted due to poor weather conditions.

It hopes the situation will improve by the end of this week and that the cable tuners will no longer be a threatened species next week.

But if all of this is progress, I'd prefer not to be a part of it.

Progress will never eliminate the need for respect.

9 September 2005

[Copyright Expatica 2005]

Subject: Telenet, digital television, living in Belgium