Moving house: how to take your internet with you (and come out ahead)

Moving house is the perfect moment to give your telecom subscription a fresh look. A new address often means new technologies within reach — and therefore offers that simply weren't possible before. Here's how to move your internet, television and phone calmly, without a single day offline.

1. The right timing: three to four weeks ahead

The golden rule fits in one sentence: tell your provider as soon as your moving date is set, ideally three to four weeks in advance. That margin isn't a luxury. As soon as an engineer visit is needed — activating a line, making a connection, bringing fibre into the building — it's the technicians' diary that sets the pace.

If your date is still moving, share the window anyway. As long as nothing has been activated, a file is usually easy to reschedule. Telling your provider too early costs nothing; telling them too late costs you a few days without a connection.

2. Transfer your plan, or switch provider?

Two routes are open to you, and neither is the wrong one:

• Transferring your subscription: your current plan follows you to the new address. It's the simplest route — you keep your logins, your email address, your set-top boxes and, as a rule, your landline number as long as you stay within the same area.
• Switching provider: you use the move as an opportunity to land on a plan that suits your new home better. The moving fees some providers apply, and fibre that happens to be available at the new address, often make that exercise worth it.

In both cases the useful instinct is the same: compare first, decide after. An address may qualify for technologies the previous one didn't have, and a household that moves rarely has exactly the same needs as five years ago. Our comparison tool ranks offers by real cost over twelve months — the only comparison that counts.

3. Check what is genuinely available at the new address

In Belgium, availability is decided street by street, sometimes building by building. Two flats in the same neighbourhood can have genuinely different options. So your neighbours' experience is a clue, not proof — and that's good news: it pays to check rather than assume.

Two minutes are enough to settle it: send us the new address through our availability check and an advisor confirms which technologies actually reach it and which plans go with them. If you'd first like to understand what sits behind those technologies, our fibre guide lays it all out.

4. Moving day: no day offline

Three precautions are enough for a smooth handover. Cancel nothing before your new installation is confirmed: the confirmed date of the new connection is the starting gun, not your signed lease. Allow a short overlap of a few days between the two addresses, so you're already online at home while the last boxes are still travelling. And let your new provider handle the switch: Easy Switch was designed for exactly that, and our switching guide describes the full sequence.

Two details that are often forgotten. Your mobile plan moves with you automatically: updating your billing address is all it takes. And your equipment — modem, set-top boxes, remotes — is best kept together in one box until your provider tells you what to keep and what to send back.

5. Your telecom moving checklist

1. Date confirmed? Tell your provider, three to four weeks ahead.
2. Check availability at the new address before you sign anything.
3. Compare transferring versus switching on real cost over twelve months.
4. Get the installation or activation date confirmed in writing.
5. Allow a few days of overlap between the two addresses.
6. Update your billing address, including for your mobile plan.
7. Gather modem, set-top boxes and accessories into a single box.

Prepared properly, a telecom move takes about fifteen minutes of your time, spread over three weeks. And on arrival you'll often have a connection that's better and cheaper than the one you left behind — which is exactly why a quick comparison is worth the detour.