• Senators Juan Pablo Martín and Ester del Brío affirm that it is necessary to increase business connectivity in rural areas
The senators of the Popular Parliamentary Group Juan Pablo Martín and Esther del Brío, have presented a motion, for debate in the Committee on Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, in which they urge the Government to bring broadband to all industrial estates and thus , Increase business connectivity in rural areas.
Martín, senator for Ávila and del Brío, senator for Salamanca, consider that it is necessary to increase business connectivity in rural areas and, therefore, they request that broadband reach all industrial estates and expand coverage in the estates to which only one operator arrives.
The senators of the Popular Group present this initiative to promote the digitization of industrial estates through the extension of the New Generation Broadband National Expansion Plan.
As explained in the text of the motion, Spain “must achieve full business connectivity through full coverage in industrial, urban or rural areas of public electronic communications networks. Therefore, they require the Government to provide very high speed broadband services to areas that do not currently have this coverage, nor is it planned for the coming years (white areas), as well as those areas that receive only an operator (gray areas).
Juan Pablo Martín affirms that "from the PP we always support the self-employed and SMEs, the main creators of employment" and criticizes "the negligence of the government by not betting on extending broadband to employment-generating spaces where agribusiness companies settle, distribution, logistics and many others for which connectivity is essential. If this situation was important in the past, it is even more so as a result of the impulse of digitization and telework as a consequence of the confinement by Covid19 ”.
For this reason, senator Juan Pablo Martín considers that “we must be aware of the need to promote concepts such as telework, connectivity, and presence in networks, since it is not reaching a large number of rural municipalities whose logistics and business areas they are usually far from the urban area due to their urban planning and are being ignored by the operators ”.
In his opinion, if the Government takes into account the initiative of the GPP, “we will be able to improve the functionality and quality of the digital services necessary for digital transformation and thereby increase the well-being and quality of life of citizens, contributing to success. of a model of sustainable growth based on the Gigabit society ”.
On the other hand, Esther del Brío indicates that “the PP demands the government to identify as eligible White Zones all industrial areas in Spain that do not have very high speed broadband coverage and, once the catalog of all "These areas, hand in hand with local entities and operators, establish a specific and preferential financing line to make possible their digitization with fiber optics within a maximum period of two years."
In addition, the popular senator from Salamanca recalls that the New Generation Broadband Extension Program is co-financed with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and that the government must build the necessary infrastructures and internal channels for broadband to arrive to these business areas, as well as encouraging operators to take fiber to the industrial estates and logistics and business areas of rural areas that are being left out of this digitization process.
