● The list of successful tenderers can be consulted in This link:
Madrid, July 18, 2024.- The Government of Spain has awarded the grants of the first call for the UNICO Active Networks program, which will allocate 508 million euros to finance the necessary infrastructures to provide 5G coverage to more than 1.8 million inhabitants of small municipalities. This is the call for a higher amount destined for a technological deployment in Spain, with the aim of also putting 5G at the service of the economy and people in municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants.
The final resolution published by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function, through the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, will increase access to 5G coverage in hundreds of municipalities through 7,330 antennas throughout Spain, 174 of them newly created. In addition, it is planned to cover 30,000 kilometres of our country’s road network.
This programme is funded by the European Next Generation EU funds within the framework of the Recovery Plan, and has not undergone any changes with regard to the provisional resolution. Four operators have benefited from this call resolved in competitive competition, which will achieve the total mobilization of 566 million euros. This investment will provide the active, passive equipment and infrastructure necessary to develop this technology in municipalities of less than 10,000 inhabitants in which there is no mobile coverage of at least 50 Mbps downstream, and is not expected in the next three years.
The final distribution by province has left Telefónica as the company that obtained the highest amount, receiving more than 298 million euros to equip 4,123 sites. Secondly, Orange Spain has exceeded 115 million euros to enable from 5G to 1,505 antennas. While Vodafone Spain has obtained more than 66 million euros with 1,220 sites assigned, and the UTE Avatel-Xfera has obtained more than 28 million to provide 5G to 482 sites.
The Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, María González Veracruz, stressed that this final resolution “is another demonstration of how the Government is shaping our country technologically, reaching the almost two million Spaniards who live in small municipalities, and their visitors. After this deployment, they will be able to access the possibilities that 5G offers and apply them in agricultural, industrial, tourist activities or the qualitative improvement of their public services provided in a more efficient and precise way.”
González Veracruz has stressed that “with this great public investment we are going to bring 5G to hundreds of villages to which this technology would probably not reach in years since it is not economically profitable for private initiative. That has been the government’s priority since 2018, and the results are visible in the recent European Report of the Digital Decade, which has just placed us back with the ‘yellow malliot’ in fixed connectivity with many points of advantage with the persecuting countries, and these grants will serve to consolidate our podium in 5G mobile connectivity.”
Once this call is resolved, the Government of Spain intends to launch UNICO Activos II imminently with almost 88 million additional destined to areas that had not been selected in it. The work of mapping actions together with the operators to locate the areas not selected has already begun, with the aim of launching a basic order with terms very similar to those that have been governed in the first call.
5G Active Networks is a pioneering program in Europe by allocating European funds to finance active equipment that extends the territorial deployment of 5G with full functionality (Stand Alone) in small municipalities. With this call and the already resolved UNICO 5G Backhaul Networks program, to bring the optical fiber to the sites, are more than 1 billion euros invested by the Government of Spain to promote the early deployment of 5G infrastructures, in collaboration with the private sector, in municipalities less than 10,000 inhabitants.
Promotion strategy of 5G and 6G technology The promotion strategy of 5G and 6G of the Government aims to advance in the vertebration of the territory leading the deployment of these technologies in Europe, investing for it about 1,500 million euros. The aim is to exploit the capacities of 5G and 6G as transformative elements of the economy and society.
To this end, it has implemented programs for each of the phases of development of these new mobile communication technologies in Spain with over 318 million grants, from the development of pilot projects and use cases – through Red.es-, the integration of technology in industrial value chains (UNICO 5G Sectorial), to research and innovation in the next technological generations (UNICO R+D 5G advanced and 6G).
In addition, Spain has been one of the first countries in the European Union to have completed the allocation of the entire 5G spectrum, in addition to having dedicated 450 Mhz for self-provision and industrial use, and the increase in caps to allow operators to better manage traffic increases.
They have the final resolution in This link: