The Government will create ‘grey areas’ on top of the existing white areas, to ensure more municipalities can receive funding for very high-speed broadband deployment.
Background: Since 2013, successive governments in Spain have carried out the Plan for NGA Broadband Extension (PEBA–NGA). Every year, the Government allocates funds to specific projects. For the years 2019–2021, €400m of European funds have been available, with a view to cover 95% of the population of each Spanish province with connections of 300Mbps or faster. Until 2018, the plan was aiming at speeds of 100Mbps.
The Government creates grey areas: On 24 February 2020, the Ministry of Economy and Digital Transformation (MINECO) published the call for tender for the year 2020. For the first time, the plan will include grey areas, in addition to the white areas. The Government considers ‘grey areas’ as those where service is provided by a single operator, and where speeds are below 100Mbps. White areas, which were already identified in previous years, are those where speeds do not reach at least 30Mbps and there is no plan to serve them in the next three years. The call for tender includes a map with geo-localisation of the services provided by the operators, so that about 60,000 grey and white areas are identified, for a total of circa 2.25m eligible households.
The country is leading the way in Europe: Spain has one of the largest footprints of very high-speed broadband networks, with FTTH available to 77% of the population and cable (HFC) covering 49% of the population. Currently, 81% of the population can access speeds of 100Mbps or faster. Once the projects approved in 2019 are complete, this will rise to 91%. With the current call for tenders, which is expected to be finalised in April 2020, the Government aims to provide access to very high-speed broadband to an additional 1.5m inhabitants.
