Rodeiro, April 30, 2024.- The subdelegate of the Government in Pontevedra, Abel Losada, reported on the “unstoppable progress” in the deployment of optical fiber in the region of Deza, an area that was an example of the effort of the Government of Spain, through the Ministry of Digital Transformation, to bring connectivity with minimum symmetric speeds of 100 “megas” to the “last corner of the last municipality of a province with a population density as high and as dispersed as ours”.
The deputy delegate went today to the parish of Santabaia, in Rodeiro where he supervised, together with the mayor, José Luís Camiñas, with the deputy mayor, Alberte Lamazares, with the councilor for Digital Transformation, Patricia Hermida, and with the delegate of Red Abierta, Óscar Barreiro, the fiber deployment works carried out in this municipality. Losada explained that in the region, Silleda and Vila de Cruces already have the fiber deployed in approximately 90% of the territory. Lalín is also in an advanced phase and will continue to deploy it with agility until the end of the year. No case of Rodeiro come from starting the proceedings and it is estimated that they will be finished within six months. In the near future, it will also start the stoppage in Agolada to try to connect the whole municipality before the end of the year.
Abel Losada took the opportunity to urge all the municipalities of the province to expedite the permits that may be pending to undertake the necessary interventions in the extension of the fiber in this final stretch of the Government's UNI-Broadband Plan, financed with European funds from the Recovery Plan. The subdelegate stressed the prominent role that the province of Pontevedra maintains in the implementation of high-speed internet connectivity plans, where it ranks ninth in the total of 52 provinces in terms of speed in the processing of permits for its deployment.
Red Abierta is the firm responsible for carrying out the fiber laying work of the annuality of 2024 and maintains in the planning phase the corresponding ones until 2025, year in which the coverage will be reached throughout the province. The company, with an award of 7,685,861 euros in this state contract, has planned a total investment in its network that will reach 9,675,858 euros, since it is a neutral operator that rents its infrastructure to operators providing final services. In total, 3.5 million meters of optical fiber are expected to be installed in the province of Pontevedra to carry the service to all the cores by December 2025, “which means a great engineering effort to fit all that primary and secondary cabling and the connection nodes.”
Currently, the areas where cable is being most advanced are the northern Deza (Lalín and Rodeiro), the Val Miñor (especially in Nigrán), the Baixo Miño, Arousa and the Chipirón area (O Porriño, Mos and Salceda de Caselas), as well as the Paradanta (Arbo and As Neves).
Abel Losada indicated that in this phase, the UN-Banda plan will send the optical fiber to the other 18,104 family units and companies by the end of 2025 “thus improving our competitiveness and making it possible for everyone to develop a work and life project wherever they decide to reside”. “There is no better investment to equate territories than to equate services,” he insisted.