15th November 2021
The operator announces an alliance with Eutelsat and new services of up to 100 Mbps for rural and remote environments,
Hispasat and Eutelsat have formed an alliance to promote initiatives to reduce the digital divide in Spain and Portugal that Hispasat already has in place. Through this agreement, the Spanish operator will complement its current capabilities with those that Eutelsat's Konnect satellite has over both countries and, in this way, will operate and market quality broadband connectivity services for operators and providers in collaboration with Eutelsat. telecommunications services to this agreement.
For Miguel Ángel Panduro, CEO of HISPASAT, “digitization cannot be addressed without having previously guaranteed the connectivity of the entire territory.
Satellite technology has evolved and allows immediate 100 Mbps internet access from any point, no matter how inaccessible it may be.
At HISPASAT we are fully committed to the purpose of allowing all citizens access to the internet and contributing to the digitization of economic activity regardless of their geographical location and for this reason we have closed this alliance with Eutelsat to complement our current capacity.
Thanks to this agreement, it is part of the lines of action proposed by Hispasat in its 2020-25 Strategic Plan, aimed at transforming the infrastructure operator company into a satellite services and solutions company, HISPASAT has launched a new offer in Spain wholesale, neutral and open to all satellite broadband telecommunications operators of up to 100 Mbps, aimed at closing the digital divide in the country.
Again according to Panduro, “we are facing a unique opportunity to promote universal connectivity in the Spanish territory. We are not just talking about giving 100 Mbps for residential services in remote areas, but about digitizing their fields and their livestock, bringing them health, training and electronic administration services and protecting their forests against fires”.
According to estimates from the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, by the end of 2021 more than 1 million Spanish households will not have 100 Mbps Internet access. Much of this population still lacks connectivity of High quality is found in rural environments, where the deployment of terrestrial infrastructure (fiber optics and 5G) is insufficient. In Portugal, 30% of rural households lack high-speed Internet access.
This digital divide - suffered not only by households, but also by SMEs - is a determining factor in the depopulation of rural areas. Only quality connectivity will make it possible to articulate the social structure of the entire territory around digitization, the deconcentration of the population and its activities, and equal rights and opportunities for all citizens.
Universal coverage and its rapid deployment make satellite an ideal technological solution to democratize Internet access and take it where other alternatives fail. For this reason, Hispasat advocates technological neutrality and the complementarity of technical solutions that allow us to respond to the connectivity objective for 100% of the population set by the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Spanish government for 2025.
For more information, visit https://conectateporsatelite.es/