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The inclusion of the new gray areas in the call, together with the white ones, will allow a greater number of locations to be targeted for the deployment of new generation high-speed access networks, boosting the social and territorial cohesion of the state
- The public consultation that begins today includes for the first time a map of NGA white and gray areas identified from georeferenced coverage, which has allowed improving the typification of zones and streamlining the administrative process
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation will include for the first time the gray areas, together with the white areas, in the call for grants from the NGA Broadband Extension Program. On the initiative of the Government, the European Commission authorized in December the inclusion of these areas among the possible objectives of aid for broadband deployment in the Member States.
This expansion will allow a greater number of localities to receive aid for the deployment of new generation high-speed access networks, thereby reinforcing the territorial and social spreading of the country.
The gray NGA zones included in the consultation are those in which, even having coverage or very high speed coverage forecasts in the next three years, it is provided by a single operator and where the speed is less than 100 Mbps. The white areas they are those that do not have coverage of networks of speed of at least 30 Mbps, nor plans for their endowment in the next three years.
The public consultation that begins today includes the preliminary relationship of white and gray NGA areas. This relationship is an essential element for the identification of potential areas of action and receipt of aid through the 2020 call of the National Broadband Broadband Program of New Generation (PEBA-NGA).
The consultation includes the publication of a map of NGA white and gray areas identified from the georeferenced coverage provided by the operators, which contains more than 60,000 eligible areas with an estimated figure, based on data provided by the Cadastre, of some 2,250,000 real estate units.
The incorporation of this location model will make it more efficient and streamline the administrative process of previous years, by simplifying the consultation process in a single phase. It will also facilitate the administration and the operators of public aid management, optimizing the location of the zones and allowing the agents to plan the deployment through a geo-referenced map or layer with the different white and gray NGA zones in a more selective way, Accurate and automated.
The extension of very high speed broadband is driven by the Government and is one of the engines of the development of inclusive and sustainable economic growth. Spain has the largest fiber network in Europe, with 45 million accesses. The coverage of the population at speeds of 30 Megabits per second, after having imposed compliance with regulatory obligations to operators with the 800 Plan, is currently over 94%. With regard to coverage at speeds of 100 Megabits per second, the latest actions carried out in 2019 with the Broadband Extension Plan (PEBA) will allow, at the end of work and projects underway, the ultrafast speed reaches 91% of citizens.
With the next call of the PEBA-NGA 2020, which will use the map that is submitted for consultation today, it is expected to facilitate access at very high speed to an additional 1,500,000 inhabitants, contributing to greater territorial cohesion and the reduction of the digital divide .
