Proximus already covers 92.4 percent of households with its VDSL network and plans to upgrade another 1,000 street cabinets this year for VDSL. However, customers further than 1.6 km from the cabinet are unable to receive the faster speeds. For example in Frasnes-Lez-Anvaing, only 60 percent of homes can receive up to 100 Mbps over VDSL. The town does have good 4G coverage though, so Proximus will use this to boost home internet speeds. The tests will start in July and run for several months, after which Proximus will consider a wider roll-out.
Proximus and the VIVES II - Louvain Technology Fund invested in April 2015 in Tessares, a spin-off from the Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL). Tessares' technology is based on the Multipath TCP, a recently standardised extension to TCP that combines multiple network subflows in order to improve the quality of the internet connection. Tessares' technology has already attracted interest from operators in Europe, Asia Pacific and the US. Elsewhere in Europe operators such as Deutsche Telekom and Greece's Cosmote are already offering similar hybrid services combining DSL and LTE.
