The Belgian Institute for Postal services and Telecommunications (BIPT, http://www.bipt.be) is the Belgian federal regulatory body responsible for regulating the electronic communications market, the postal market, the electromagnetic spectrum of radio frequencies and the radio and television broadcasting in the Brussels-Capital Region.

For each of them, the regulatory action of BIPT is based on six basic objectives:

• fostering healthy competition and maintaining market access;
• contributing to the development of a domestic market of efficient networks and services;
• protecting the users’ interests while taking account of social inclusion, a high level of protection, clear information and transparency;
• managing scarce resources such as radio frequencies and numbering resources;
• ensuring network security;
• promoting connectivity and access to very high capacity networks, including fixed, mobile and wireless networks, as well as the take-up of such networks.

In matters of security, BIPT verifies that appropriate security measures are taken by the operators to ensure the proper operation of their networks and services and to protect (personal) data which are processed within the framework of the provision of these networks and services.

The Institute also participates, via its duty team, in the management of incidents regarding different obligations carried by operators for instance by facilitating contacts between the authorities and the operators and by coordinating the operators’ actions.

The Institute has also been appointed as inspection service for the electronic communications sector within the framework of the Critical Infrastructures Act and as sectoral authorities for the Digital Infrastructures within the framework of the Network and Information Security directive.