The Government of Catalonia will Invest €56m in 4 years for deploying the 5G network in Catalonia

• The Government aspires to turn Catalonia into the 5G capital, a pole of attraction for the new network
• The public fibre optic network will guarantee widespread connectivity for the 5G aerials

The Government of Catalonia foresees investing €56m during the next four years in the deployment of the 5G network in Catalonia. This is the mobile infrastructure that will replace current mobile 4G connections.  The foreseen investment amounts to 20% of the €280m delivered by the private sector and the European Commission.

With this 5G strategy, which foresees the deployment of this technology all around the territory, the government aspires to turn Catalonia into the 5G capital, as this territory has the capacity to become a pole of attraction for the new network. In this sense, we need to highlight that from the 37 EU research projects in 5G developed during the last three years, 22 counted on the collaboration of Catalonian centres. Therefore, the strategy of the Government of Catalonia will imply generating, gaining and retaining talent.

The strategy foresees the creation of a 5G cross-border corridor which would enable the development of half-scale projects on autonomous and connected vehicles. In this sense, the European Union is already working on defining which should be those EU 5G corridors, and Catalonia is working with Occitania on an alliance to prepare their candidacy for the Mediterranean 5G corridor as one of their priority projects.

This 5G corridor would spread out along the AP-7 motorway in Catalonia and pass the border, so that the motorway gets connected to the 5G infrastructure and allows the traffic of vehicles without driver. In addition, the corridor would allow to define the 5G deployment standards, to increase road safety, and design new digital services for the users.

The government’s project to deploy a public fibre optic network will guarantee widespread connectivity for the 5G aerials around the territory, and, by 2020, it is foreseen to have all the capitals of the counties connected to the governmental fibre optic, and to guarantee a point of access to all Catalonian municipalities by 2023.

[03/18/2019]