The Government presents the Plan for Digital Connectivity and Infrastructures and the Strategy for Boosting 5G Technology, endowed with 4,320 million euros until 2025

The Council of Ministers today presented the Plan for the Connectivity and Digital Infrastructures of society, the economy and the territories, which will continue to expand high-speed broadband coverage to reach 100% of the population, as well as the Strategy to promote the development of 5G technology. Both plans deploy part of the project “Digital Connectivity, Cybersecurity Boost and 5G Deployment” of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Spanish economy.

Both the Connectivity Plan and the Strategy for 5G are axes of the agenda Spain Digital 2025. They foresee an investment in these five years of 4.32 billion euros of public investment (883 million already foreseen in the Budgets for 2021) and it is planned to mobilize a private investment of 24 billion euros.

Connectivity and 5G have been identified as recovery levers and drivers of digital transformation in the European Union’s Annual Sustainable Development Strategy. They are also noted in the EU Recovery and Resilience Mechanism and in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Spanish economy, presented on October 7, which will allocate 33% of its funds to digitization.

Both plans have previously been shared with the members of the Permanent Telecommunications Commission of the Consultative Council for Digital Transformation, a forum for public-private collaboration in which telecommunications operators, manufacturers, installers, service providers, consultancy and integrators linked to the telecommunications and audiovisual sector are represented, as well as experts, economic and social entities.

The Plan for the Connectivity and Digital Infrastructures of society, economy and territories has an investment of 2,320 million euros until 2025, 583 million in the General State Budgets of 2021. Its objectives are to contribute to territorial cohesion; to promote economic growth; to support the digital transformation of economic activities, and to facilitate access to essential services at a distance.

It is also aligned with the European Union’s objectives on activities related to the role of connectivity in digital transformation, such as the construction of the Digital Single Market and the European Gigabit Society.

The first axis of the Plan for connectivity is the extension of broadband to favor territorial vertebration, and includes measures to encourage the deployment of broadband in urban centers, depopulated areas, reference centers and assistance centers, so that by 2025 a speed of 100 megabits per second is reached for 100% of the population.

It is an ambitious goal, but one that can be achieved. The access speed of 100 Mbps is now accessible to 84% of the population and within a year, when the works that are in execution are finished, 91% coverage will be reached. The advances in connectivity in rural Spain have also been considerable. Fiber optic coverage in rural areas reaches 46% of the population, doubling the European average of rural coverage and well above the coverage of France (12%), Germany (6%) or the United Kingdom (6%).

The second axis, connectivity for the company, includes all actions to strengthen connectivity associated with business environments: industrial estates, logistics centers or business parks. The goal is for 100% of industrial estates to have a scalable connection to one gigabit per second by 2025, one of the goals of the European strategy “the Gigabit Society”.

As far as SMEs are concerned, a programme will be launched to provide digital connectivity vouchers for small and medium-sized enterprises participating in public programmes to promote their digitisation.

Spain, Data Hub is the third axis of the Plan and includes the measures aimed at improving the connectivity of cross-border digital infrastructure and the promotion of participation in European programs of common interest (IPCEI) that will be implemented in the period 2021-2027, such as the industrial alliance for cloud services and the satellite system of secure communications, both necessary to cement European digital sovereignty and the growth of the national technological industry.

Finally, the Plan includes two transversal axes, one related to regulatory reform and public information systems (which includes the approval of the new General Law on Telecommunications), and another to the renovation of telecommunications infrastructures in buildings, including measures to support energy efficiency.

The Strategy to promote 5G technology is the backbone of the objectives and measures included in Spain Digital 2025 to take advantage of the emergence of this new technology in the economic transformation. 5G, the fifth generation of mobile technology, enables hyper connectivity (permanent, high-capacity, high-speed connections between people and machines), so it has a great disruptive effect on the economy and can also serve as a vector for extending high-speed network coverage.

Spain starts from an advanced position: it leads the ranking of 5G pilot experiences, with 32 of the 245 pre-commercial pilot experiences in progress throughout the European Union and is the second European country in number of “5G Cities”, with 39 cities, only behind the United Kingdom.

The Strategy, which foresees investments of 2 billion until 2025, of which 300 million are already foreseen in the Budgets for 2021, consists of three axes. The first includes actions to facilitate the availability of priority bands for 5G services. In this regard, Spain already auctioned in 2018 one of the priority frequency bands, the 3.5 GHz, which has boosted the first commercial offers of operators, and the auction of the 700 MHz band is scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2021.

The second axis establishes measures to support the deployment of networks. The goals are to reach 75% of the Spanish population with 5G coverage, as well as uninterrupted 5G coverage on major roads, railways and unique points such as airports.

Likewise, the deployment