Vodafone and the Belgacom Group have extended by three years an existing agreement under which they jointly offer services to businesses and consumers in Belgium and Luxembourg.

The UK operator group often strikes such non-equity ‘partner market’ agreements in those countries where it does not run a local network itself.

The two operators have been working in tandem across the two countries since 2003 with joint services such as roaming. In addition, they offer international managed services to enterprise users who will continue to be serviced through a single point of contact.

The two companies will also continue with joint mobile device procurement.

The agreement covers both Belgium and Luxembourg, where Belgacom trades under the Tango brand.

The new agreement coincided with the Belgian group’s Q2 results, which saw its revenue decline, although net income grew thanks to cost savings.

Belgacom saw revenue drop by 0.9 per cent to €1.57 billion, with declines in both its consumer (2.4 per cent) and enterprise units (7.6 per cent). Its troubled international carrier services unit BICS actually saw a 0.5 per cent revenue gain in the three months to end of June.

Net income (expressed on a group share basis) grew to €251 million from €155 million in the same quarter in 2013.

Belgium’s mobile market became bracingly competitive thanks to the entry of cable operator Telenet.