Those of us who live in urban areas take it for granted that we have fiber coverage, but there are many rural areas from Spain where fiber has taken a long time to arrive and even some where they are still waiting for it. To ensure coverage of the entire territory, the government launched subsidies for operators to deploy their network. Now we have a map to know the status of all deployments, interactive and non-profit.
The map. It has been developed by Fernando García Álvarez, a software engineer who has contacted us to publicize his creation. It is an independent and non-profit initiative. Its objective was to gather all the information on fiber deployment plans, both the previous PEBA and the current UNICO plans in a single place, something that until now had to be consulted through various sources. His name is Fiber Programs and when we open it we find a heat map of the entire peninsula, with the red areas representing the areas with the greatest coverage and the yellow areas representing the least coverage.
Detailed information. To obtain all the information on the different programs you have to zoom in and click on one of them. Here we can see which operator is carrying out the deployment, which plan it belongs to and other more in-depth data such as the total amount of the subsidy and the completion deadline. This is especially useful for those projects that are still underway because it allows you to know when a specific zone will be connected.
Subsidies. That in 2026 there will be those who do not have a fiber connection is shocking, but there is a reason why there are still areas without this infrastructure: it is not profitable for operators to bring their infrastructure to an area where there are very few inhabitants. From this need was born the Broadband Extension Program or PEBA. The plan was active from 2013 to 2020 and subsidized almost 800 projects from more than 100 operators. In 2024, the UNICO Broadband plan took over the baton, with more than 18 million euros and with Avatel and Adamo as the main recipients of the aid.
Spain and fiber. Although there are some areas left to cover, they are the least. The reality is that 95% of the Spanish territory has access to fiber optics, which places us well ahead of the European average, which is 64%. Our colleagues from Xataka Móvil made a devastating comparison: a town in Soria has better internet than Berlin.
Image | Fiber Programs
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