Santander, September 3, 2024.- Within the framework of the 38th Meeting of the Digital Economy and Telecommunications of AMETIC, one of the most outstanding events for the technological sector in Spain, the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, María González Veracruz, has announced the launch of new calls to continue deploying fixed and mobile connectivity throughout the country. These are the Active Networks 5G II and Broadband 2024 programs. Both are framed in the government’s strategy to consolidate Spain as a leader in digital transformation and in the 4th industrial revolution through an unprecedented public investment of more than 2 billion euros since 2018 to provide our country with the most robust digital infrastructures in Europe.
This meeting, which marks the official beginning of the course for the digital industry, brought together the main agents of the sector, from SMEs to large global companies, as well as prominent actors specialized in telecommunications.
During her speech, the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures stressed the importance of this event as a catalyst for digital progress in Spain, reviewed the achievements reached in the last year, as well as the roadmap with the objectives for the near future and announced the recent publication of two new public calls for help for connectivity in Spain.
The first of the calls is for mobile connectivity, with the Active Networks 5G II program. It will have an investment of close to 90 million euros, aimed at extending 5G coverage to municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants throughout the provinces, which were not mapped in the first phase of the program.
The other call is for fixed connectivity, through the UNICO Broadband 2024 program. It has an endowment of 25 million euros and is launched with the aim of connecting 200,000 additional households and companies throughout the national territory. These calls made during the weeks of August reflect the Government’s commitment to ensuring the technological backbone of citizenship in a fully connected Spain.
María González Veracruz stressed that “thanks to the investments and policies implemented, Spain has positioned itself as the second country in Europe with better connectivity in fiber optics. With more than 92.5% of households connected at speeds of up to 1 Gbps, the country continues to move towards total digitization, which will allow Spain to consolidate itself as a benchmark in the global technological field.”
In this regard, the Secretary of State pointed out that “for this we have a key tool that we are going to use from the Government to lead this time that is the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT). A newly created public business entity for the promotion of innovation, which begins its journey with almost EUR 20 billion in financial instruments in the form of loans, grants and capital investments.
The Secretary of State ended by acknowledging that "we are achieving a transformation and reindustrialization that will change the economic paradigm of Spain", inviting all the actors in the sector to collaborate to meet the new challenges that are presented on the horizon.