ICTs in general and the Internet in particular have been shown to bring significant benefits to consumers and businesses that are able to access it. However, although rural residents enjoy widespread access to the Internet, they are less likely to have high-speed, or broadband, Internet access than their urban counterparts.
Broadband Internet access in rural areas is less prevalent than in more densely populated areas of our country mainly due to geographic and demographic features:
- Spain is one of the most mountainous territories in Europe. Approximately a 50 per cent of the Spanish geography is covered by mountains and the average altitude is 660 meters. This point complicates deployment of common wired broadband technologies which require putting up copper wires or fibre for example.
- Population is widely dispersed. Rural population in Spain is more than 23 percent- However, there is a low population density at rural areas About 84% of municipalities in Spain have less than 5.000 inhabitants.
- Spain has an average broadband penetration similar to other OECD countries. Nevertheless this distribution is not uniform in urban and rural areas.
These rationales prove that difference in access may lie in the higher cost and limited availability of broadband Internet in rural areas. Consequently, the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade is working to:
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address noticed market failures at rural and isolated areas where the market alone is unlikely to assume the necessary high costs of broadband deployment;
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achieve digital inclusion and literacy of rural areas population, initiative focused on women, children and old people mainly which is the pre-eminent group of population at these areas
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facilitate rural development through increased competitiveness
Since 2005, the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade has granted financial aids to operators in order to encourage their investments in areas where there would unlikely have been any broadband deployment. Two main programmes compose the Spanish strategy to provide broadband Internet access to rural and isolated areas: