The Government of Spain accelerates the technological structuring of the country with the award of 508 million euros to provide 5G coverage to small municipalities

The Government of Spain has awarded the grants of the first call of the UNICO Redes Activas programme, which will allocate 508 million euros to finance the infrastructure needed to provide 5G coverage to more than 1.8 million inhabitants of small municipalities. This is the largest call for technological deployment in Spain, with the aim of putting 5G at the service of the economy and people in municipalities of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

The final resolution published by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function, through the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure, will increase access to 5G coverage in hundreds of municipalities through 7,330 antennas across Spain, 174 of them newly created. In addition, it is planned to cover 30,000 kilometres of the country's road network.

This programme is financed by the European NextGenerationEU funds in the framework of the Recovery Plan, and is unchanged from the provisional resolution. Four operators have benefited from this competitive call for proposals, which will mobilise a total of 566 million euros. This investment will provide the active and passive equipment and infrastructure necessary to develop this technology in municipalities of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants where there is no mobile coverage of at least 50 Mbps downstream or where it is not planned for the next three years.

The final distribution by province has left Telefónica as the company that has obtained the largest amount, receiving more than 298 million euros to equip 4,123 sites. Second, Orange Spain has over 115 million euros to 5G-enable 1,505 antennas. While Vodafone Spain has obtained more than 66 million euros with 1,220 sites allocated, and the Avatel-Xfera joint venture has obtained more than 28 million euros to equip 482 sites with 5G.

Once this call has been resolved, the Government of Spain intends to launch UNICO Activas II imminently with almost 88 million euros in additional funds for areas that were not selected in this call. Work has already begun on the mapping of actions together with the operators to locate the unselected areas, with the aim of launching a basic order with terms very similar to those used in the first call for proposals.

Redes Activas 5G is a pioneering programme in Europe by earmarking European funds to finance active equipment to extend the territorial roll out of 5G with full functionality (Stand Alone) in small municipalities. With this call and the already resolved UNICO 5G Redes Backhaul programme, to bring fibre optics to the sites, the Government of Spain has invested more than 1 billion euros to promote the early roll out of 5G infrastructure, in collaboration with the private sector, in municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

Strategy to boost 5G and 6G technology

The Government's strategy to boost 5G and 6G aims to advance in the structuring of the territory by leading the roll out of these technologies in Europe, investing close to 1.5 billion euros for this purpose. The aim is to exploit the capabilities of 5G and 6G as transformational elements of the economy and society.

To this end, it has launched programmes for each of the phases of development of these new mobile communication technologies in Spain with more than 318 million euros in aid, from the development of pilot projects and use cases - via Red.es -, the integration of the technology into industrial value chains (UNICO 5G Sectoral), to research and innovation in the next technological generations (UNICO R&D 5G Advanced and 6G).

In addition, Spain was one of the first countries in the European Union to complete the allocation of the entire 5G spectrum, in addition to dedicating 450 Mhz for self-provisioning and industrial use, and increasing caps that allow operators to better manage traffic increases.

Non official translation