The Government of Spain is collaborating with operators to bring fiber optics to rural areas and generally less profitable areas across the country. For this, we find aid plans such as the PEBA-NGA, and also the UNICO program. Now, we have known the result of the award, where Telefónica has taken the 80% of aid.
This plan is one of the most important in history for the deployment of rural fiber in Spain due to the magnitude of the aid. In the previous two years, 150 million had been distributed each year, but by this year they had reserved 250 million, thanks above all to the European Next Gen funds.
Telefónica takes 80% of the aid
Specific, Telephone has been done with 197.8 million euros of aid, while the rest have gone to Adamo and Avatel. Telefónica has acquired 39 provinces, in addition to Ceuta and Melilla. In them, it will invest a total of 407.3 million euros, so the aid “only” will be 48.6% of the total investment.
In the case of Adamo fiber, the operator has been awarded the projects in the provinces of Huelva, Zamora, Toledo, Palencia, Cantabria, Navarra and Tarragona, for which they will receive 27.43 million euros. If we add to that what they will invest, we have a total of 41.35 million euros. Avatel has remained with the provinces of Malaga, Cordoba, Badajoz, Albacete, Guadalajara and Zaragoza, with an amount of 24.7 million aid. In total, the operator will invest 30.76 million euros in deploying fiber in those provinces.
Thus, we see that, between aid and private investment by the operators, the investment for deployment will be a total of € 479.41 million. In this way, just over half of the investments will come from the State, while the rest will come from the operators. In the bases of the project it was established that the aid could be of the 80% of the total investment, but Telefónica is going to invest much more in the end due to the high competition that has occurred in this call.
1.27 million business households in 4,516 municipalities
With this aid plan of almost 480 million euros, fiber optics will be deployed to 1.27 million homes and businesses on 4,516 Spanish municipalities, most of which are located in the white areas. These white areas are those that do not have network coverage that offer a speed of at least 30 Mbps, nor do they have plans to receive them in the next three years. There will also be deployment in some gray areas, where there is only one operator deployment with a speed of at least 100 Mbps, or plans for its deployment in the next three years. With this, going to rural areas to live will be increasingly accessible to be able to telecommute without speed problems.
They had also presented proposals for the deployment of Orange, MásMóvil, Asteo Red, Vento Rede, Oeste Digital, Operadora Ibérica de redes y servicios, Balalink, Hidrocantábrico Distribución Eléctrica and Technological Generation of Communications. However, they have all been left out.