In Belgium, the telco's name is Belgacom. This company has issued optical cards between 1977 and 1998 (the last one was released in April 1998). Smartcards (or chipcards) are now used in Belgium. Solaic (a French company) produces most of them, while Orga produces some public cards and most of the private cards. In addition to chipcards, Belgacom has issued some remote cards, called PhonePass, PhonePass Special Travel or Xl-Call (Xl-Call being a subsidiary of Belgacom).

Gemplus has bought the German manufacturer ODS. One of his employees, who was at the Dublin fair (13.05.2000), told me Gemplus obtained the next contract with Belgacom.

The first Belgian card equipped with a Gemplus chip is CP95 Euro. Only 10.000 of these Euro cards have been equipped with it.
 

The first BT phone booths appeared in Gent-Sint-Pieters (Flanders) at the end of 1999. As BT concluded a contract with B Telecom, the SNCB/NMVS subsidiary dealing with telecommunication matters, BT phone booths could only be seen at SNCB/NMVS stations…
At least some of them as the setting up has been stopped for the moment due to the high penetration of mobiles within the Belgian society.
Since January 2002, BT phones do only accept € coins.
 

Because it is not cheap to phone with a chipcard in Belgium, some other companies have appeared and issued remote cards. The most important ones are GTS Belgium (a merger between InTouch and Esprit Telecom), ICS, and WorldxChange. Other companies exist, while some have already disappeared... So, it is expected that some cards are valuable, but it is very hard to know because there is no catalogue, and many collectors do not like these cards.
 

For the moment, we have three GSM companies: Base (ex KPN Orange), Mobistar, and Proximus (subsidiary of Belgacom). All of them issue SIM cards and refill cards.