18th July 2018
Both companies have agreed to sell capacity in the Ka Band from the Hispasat 36W-1 and Hispasat 30W-6 satellites to reduce the digital divide in areas poorly covered by terrestrial telecommunications networks.
This business agreement is reinforced with the "Get Connected by Satellite" business campaign, which will feature a website and informative meetings in various autonomous communities to provide greater visibility to connectivity via satellite.
HISPASAT and Eurona, the operator and leading provider of Internet, voice, data and satellite television services, have strengthened their partnership to contribute to reducing the digital divide in Spain through the use of satellite-based broadband connectivity. Both companies have closed an agreement to sell Ka band capacity from the Hispasat 36W-1 and Hispasat 30W-6 satellites, launched into space this March from Cape Canaveral on board a Falcon 9 launch vehicle by SpaceX. Both satellites have beams in the Ka band over Spain, Europe and North Africa.
Although the Spanish administration has worked to lead the roll-out of fibre optics in Europe and broadband coverage is very extensive, there are still towns, principally in rural, sparsely populated or with difficult local geography, which lack access Internet access or have very low speed access. The agreement signed by HISPASAT and Eurona aims to offer a satellite-based technological solution similar in quality and price to other terrestrial technologies to the people who live in these areas. In this way, all the people who reside in the "white spaces" in Spain can have broadband Internet access thanks to the Ka band of Hispasat's satellites and Eurona's platform.
This agreement coincides with the recent announcement by the Secretary of State for the Information Society and Digital Agenda of the implementation of the Subsidy Programme to sign up for fixed Broadband Access at 30 Mbps. The people or entities in populations with less than 5,000 inhabitants which do not have fixed broadband at a minimum of 10 megabytes per second will have a 400 Euro subsidy available for the costs deriving from signing up for fixed broadband service at a minimum speed of 30 Mbps. Eurona is precisely the first certified operator to access this subsidy plan.
Hispasat's satellite Ka band represents the best alternative to provide Internet access to remote or sparsely populated areas where there are no other technological options. Being more powerful and concentrated than other frequency bands, the Ka allows for greater speed and a more reasonable cost, and therefore a much more efficient option to provide better user service.
With the recent agreement reached between Hispasat and Eurona to market the Ka band from these satellites, the latter has become the operator with the greatest satellite capacity in Europe, which will be essential to democratize Internet access in Spain. Eurona offers a technological solution similar in quality and price to other terrestrial technologies, with broadband services at 30 Mbps which can be requested through its platform, thereby facilitating high quality connectivity to anyone who is in Spain, wherever they are and wherever they live.
To broadcast and raise awareness about this agreement, both companies have implemented the "Get Connected by Satellite" project. Through this initiative, both companies seek to provide greater visibility to satellite technology and make it as easy as possible for the end user to process the state subsidies. In addition to the website dedicated to the project, HISPASAT and Eurona have organized different informative meetings to raise awareness of its satellite-based Internet solution in Asturias (Oviedo), Aragon (Zaragoza), Canary Islands (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife), Castile and León (Valladolid) and Galicia (Santiago de Compostela).
