Next phase of Spain’s €1bn-and-counting strategy for remote areas

Government offers €544m for network operators to build 5G Standalone in locations with fewer than 10,000 residents

Spain’s Ministry for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation (MINECO) is offering a €544 million to make 5G Standalone (SA) available in remote locations. Firms are invited to apply for funding to locations with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants where there are no plans for the private sector to deploy such networks within the next three years.

The funding can be allocated to active and passive infrastructure. Interested parties have until the end of October to put in a bid for funding.

About 9 million or roughly 20% of Spain’s population lives in rural areas.

Rural 5G lags fibre

Spain blazed the trail in terms of fibre deployment in Europe, massively outstripping Europe’s economies such as Germany, Italy and the UK, and even France which is way ahead of them. They are all still playing catch-up – see FTTH Council Europe’s most recent figures.

It’s more on a par with the rest of Europe regarding 5G coverage, however, at about 82% of the population. The Spanish government is keen to change this, hence its €1 billion funding strategy, which MINECO is responsible for allocating.

In June, MINECO handed out €448 million to various operators to upgrade rural 5G base stations with fibre backhaul and dangled a pot of €10 million for innovative 5G projects.

María González Veracruz, Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure observed, “With this pioneer programme in Europe, the government continues to promote the deployment of technology that opens new possibilities for the economic and social development of the country. This strategy’s aim is to promote territorial cohesion and generate opportunities and quality employment [translated from the Spanish].”

Spain’s 5G strategy is ambitious. Its “main purpose is to lead the deployment of 5G in Europe”. With this in mind, it has launched programmes covering “all phases of development of these new mobile communication technologies in Spain”.

The aid programmes that cover the deployment of infrastructure are:

• UNICO 5G Backhaul and UNICO 5G ACTIVAS

• public pilot projects and use cases through Red.es

• the integration of technology into industrial value chains (UNICO 5G Sectorial)

• basic research and innovation in 5G advanced and 6G.

The government claims Spain is been one of the first countries in the European Union to have allocated the entire 5G spectrum, and to have dedicated 450Mhz for self-provisioning of 5G and industrial use. Caps have also been increased to allow operators to better manage increases in traffic.