The Spanish government has announced further details of the plan to bring broadband at speeds of at least 100Mbps to the entire Spanish population. The Plan for Connectivity and Digital Infrastructures and the Strategy to Promote 5G Technology, part of the government’s Spain Digital 2025 Agenda, will receive EUR 4.3 billion of public funding for expanding fibre-optic infrastructure to underserved areas and extending 5G coverage. In a short statement, the government said EUR 883 million is already in the 2021 budget, which should receive parliamentary approval in the next few weeks.
The government added that it expects operators to invest around EUR 24 billion on rolling out FTTH and 5G technology within the same time frame. "The goal is for everyone, irrespective of where they live, to enjoy the benefits of these advances in connectivity under a plan that is of particular relevance to rural Spain," said government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero.
Fibre-optic coverage currently stands at 46 percent of the Spanish population, double the European average, while 84 percent of the population can access speeds of 100Mbps, a figure the government expects to increase to 91 percent by the end of 2021. Additional goals include bringing scalable broadband connections at speeds of at least 1Gbps to all of Spain’s industrial estates by 2025 and expanding 5G access to at least 75 percent of the population.
