Cash grants for residents in 'no-signal' areas to help them get online

RESIDENTS in Spain's so-called 'blank zones' with little or no internet coverage will get up to €450 each to help them connect, says Secretary of State for Information Technology in Society, José María Lassalle.

The government's new 'Satellite Plan' involves a budget of €10 million, which is hoped to benefit between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants, and includes a roll-out of higher-speed broadband connections of up to 30 megabytes.

Already, four in five Spanish residents use the internet frequently – a figure that has grown by 6.1% in the last year and continues to rise – but the government wants to extend availability to 100% of the population.

Some of Spain's least-populated and barely-inhabited areas have no coverage for mobile phones or internet, since the low customer base means it is not economically viable for telecommunications companies to fund the infrastructure.

This is true of regions such as Aragón which, despite being home to Spain's fifth-largest city – Zaragoza – also has stretches of dozens of kilometres with no civilisation, and an estimated 80% of the region's municipalities have fewer than 30 inhabitants.

Other areas with similar issues include parts of Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León, two of the mainland's largest regions which make up practically the whole of the centre of the country.

Opposition party Podemos complains Lassalle's 'Satellite Plan' does not go far enough, saying Spain is 'very backward' in terms of the so-called 'digital gap'.

According to the National Market and Competition Commission (CNMC), in towns with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, only a third of residents are able to access internet with speeds of 30MB and in most of these municipalities, fibreoptic has not even been installed.

But Lassalle insists that a 'major budgetary effort' is being made by the national government for the first time ever, and adds that investment in cyber-safety 'is not lacking'.

In fact, an international online security forum is due to be held in Spain in June.

Also, since Spain's government re-formed in November last year, it introduced the figurehead of a 'digital agenda' minister for the first time in its history.