On Thursday 17 November, the European Commission authorised an €88.3 million Spanish scheme aid made available through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to support the provision of wholesale and retail broadband services in remote rural areas of Spain.
Spain’s Recovery and Resilience Plan includes major investment projects in the electronic communications sector, including support for remote rural areas in Spain to achieve high-speed connectivity with download speed of at least 100 Mbps.
The measure will support the provision of wholesale services and, in turn, the provision of affordable retail broadband services at a fixed location with download speed of at least 100 Mbps and upload speed of 5 Mbps. It will be applied in remote, dispersed and sparsely populated rural areas where there is no coverage offering such speeds at affordable prices.
The aid will take the form of direct grants to electronic communications operators. Beneficiaries will be selected following an open, competitive, transparent and non-discriminatory selection procedure. The measure will also finance the costs directly related to end-users’ access to these services, including the purchase of user equipment, its installation and operation up to a maximum price, regardless of the technology used. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)