The telecommunications sector aims to supply the entire Spanish population and provide it with technological provisions so that everyone can enjoy a reliable and stable Internet connection. Thus, the Government remains involved in providing rural areas with an optimal data network, offering all possible assistance. Now, a second call for proposals for the UNICO 5G Active Networks program has been launched, in which it will inject 88 million euros, a much smaller incentive than in 2023.
Last year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation launched a package of aid corresponding to the improvement of 5G network infrastructures throughout Spain. The first call for proposals was quite a feat, as up to 544 million euros were invested in one go to promote the fifth generation network in municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants.
This amount financed by the European Next Generation funds for the 2026 Digital Recovery Plan seems not to have been enough to combat the territorial mobile network rift, so the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, María González Veracruz, has recited in a meeting of the newspaper El Español that the Government will be planning another launch of aid worth 88 million euros, clearly lower than the first offering.
According to the Government representative, the UNICO 5G Active Networks programme has been essential in the field of telecommunications, “which has gone from being something sectoral and has become a strategic element for economic security, because this reflects what Spain is leading.”
Rural 5G network improvements, “but there is still much to do”
The deployment of rural 5G is being carried out gradually. In the first round of aid, the Government’s main objective was to offer a higher quality 5G network to 2 million people who are in a vulnerable situation due to the limited range of mobile coverage.
With this second batch of incentives, the secretary has highlighted that there is still much to be done, since this progress depends on the technology available in the country, although for this “2.5 billion are being invested with the strength of the Recovery Plan and also with public policies.” That is, 1 billion to continue with the deployment of fiber optics and the remaining 1.5 billion to continue promoting 5G.
González Veracruz says that the 88 million euros represent a great initiative for the growth of 5G networks in Spain and are a huge incentive for those users who were not provided with fifth-generation network coverage during the first call for aid.
In addition, the Government has placed Spain at the top of the European ranking for the completion of the 5G spectrum and has revealed it as one of the nations most committed to allocating coverage of the latest generation networks in those locations where there is no access to this technology. However, the secretary calls on all telecommunications companies to join the plan to eliminate the territorial gap in order to change the current situation, and warns that “we need to understand at all levels that the market is no longer what it was 20 years ago.”
