The Government grants 140 million euros in aid to the deployment of very high speed broadband

• The Ministry of Economy and Business approves projects of 41 operators to curb the digital divide in rural Spain
• With these grants, the Broadband Extension Plan will provide access to more than 100 Mbps to another 706,000 homes and businesses

The Ministry of Economy and Business has published the resolution of the call of the year 2019 of the National Program of Extension of the Broadband of New Generation (PEBA-NGA). This program, managed by the Secretary of State for Digital Advancement, is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Following the evaluation of the proposals received, the granting of aid to 125 projects from 41 different operators worth 140.15 million euros has been favorably estimated. This means granting 93.43% of the funds available annually for the PEBA Program, 14.25% more than in the previous call. With the contributions that the beneficiary operators will make, the total investment in the winning projects will amount to 199.79 million euros.

The objective of the PEBA-NGA is to accelerate the extension of the coverage of very high speed broadband networks (more than 100 Mbps), facilitating its deployment in areas without current or planned coverage in the next three years, called 'zones white '. White areas are mainly located in rural and dispersed areas, and this program is therefore a key instrument to close the geographical digital divide, face the demographic challenge and build a more inclusive society.

The support of PEBA-NGA to the investment effort of private operators has contributed to the coverage of 100 Mbps broadband reaching 81% of Spanish citizens (data as of June 31, 2018). The deployment of this type of networks is mainly carried out in our country with fiber optic technology to the home (FTTH).

It is estimated that the new infrastructures that will be deployed with the support of this PEBA-NGA call will facilitate very high speed broadband coverage to 706,000 homes and businesses located in 13,650 unique entities with different populations. Once the subsidized projects have been deployed, in 2021, very high speed broadband coverage will reach 93.45% of the citizenship.

The following table shows the distribution of aid granted in the different Autonomous Communities: