The Spanish Science and Technology Ministery announced that it intends 30 per cent of rural Spanish homes to be able to access the internet by June, another 70 per cent by the end of the year and hopefully all of them by December 2004. Two years after the government announced its plan ‘Internet for All’, Spain is still very much behind the rest of Europe in respect to internet penetration. Recently, the Spanish minister of Science and Technlogy, Josep Piqué declared that Spain “is not where it should be” in respect to making the internet accessible for homes and businesses.
Rural Spain is currently unable to connect since the countryside is covered by TRAC analogue telephone lines that don’t support internet access. Around 240,000 homes use these lines that were installed just 10 years ago by Telefónica, at the time a public company.
The TRAC copper lines will be changed for digital ones through a E475m investment, from which E145m will come from the EU’s ERDF (European Regional Development Fund). Three LMDS telecoms will change 60 per cent of the coppers lines: Iberbanda, Base and NeoSky. Another 30 per cent will get GSM and GPRS technology provided by Telefónica Móviles. The Hispasat satellite system will cover an additional 5 per cent and the rest will get ADSL lines.
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