Spain’s council of ministers has approved a plan to allocate EUR 150 million in funding this year to bring high-speed FTTH to underserved areas. Under the PEBA-NGA programme, the government intends to increase superfast broadband coverage at speeds of between 300 Mbps and 1 Gbps to 91.24 percent of the Spanish population and 75.29 percent of rural areas by the end of 2021. Spain already has Europe’s most extensive FTTH network, with more than 8 in 10 (80.4%) of premises covered but in rural areas that figure currently stands at around 46 percent.
Government subsidies were previously limited to the installation of broadband services in 'white areas' located mainly in rural zones with low population density and lacking networks with speeds of at least 30 Mbps. They have now been extended to ‘grey’ NGA zones with one operator currently providing broadband speeds of less than 100 Mbps or planning to do so within the next 3 years.
The government granted aid amounting to nearly EUR 480 million to 130 operators for 753 rural deployment projects between 2013 and 2019, including EUR 140 million last year.
