The Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) published in their website a report with the most relevant data of the telecommunications and audiovisual sector of 2015. In this post we focus on broadband and on the deploying of new generation networks.
18 may 2016
The Telecommunications and Audiovisual Sector Economic Report 2015 points out that revenue of the Sector in Spain decreased 6%, continuing with the decrease trend of prices at the national, European and world level. The opposite happens with investments, whose annual growth rate is on the 30% partly thank you to the deploying of fixed new generation networks.
The need of financing investments and the generalised drop of revenue caused several concentration procedures in the market, such as the buy of Ono by Vodafone in 2014, of Jazztel by Orange in 2015 and of DTS by Movistar the same year. These acquisitions permit operators to be different from their competence and to counteract the decrease of revenue.
Broadband
European economic recovery is due partially to the development of broadband and, concretely, to the high and very high speed broadband. In the 2020 European Strategy, whose objective is the sustainable and sustained growth and of the Member States, the European Digital Agenda contemplates several specific plans to develop in Spain:
- Plan of telecommunications and ultra-fast networks;
- Plan of ICT in SME and e-commerce;
- Plant to boost digital economy and digital contents;
- Plan of internationalisation of technological companies;
- Plan of confidence in digital area;
- Plan of development and innovation of the ICT sector;
- Plan of digital inclusion and employability;
- Plan of digital public services;
- National Plan of Intelligent Cities.
The European Digital Agenda foresees the universal access to broadband of 10 Mbps in 2017 and of 30 Mbps in 2020. It also foresees that in 2020 50% of the Spanish homes will have a speed over or equal to 100 Mbps.
The General Law 9/2012 of Telecommunications of May 2014 meant a great impulse to the development of broadband. This law considers:
- Simplifying the license and municipal administrative authorisations regime to deploy networks;
- Facilitating the occupation laws of the public and private domain;
- Eliminating the different obstacles in the deploying of new electronic communications networks.
Great part of the European economic recovery is due partially to the development of high and very high speed broadband
Deploying of new generation networks
Investment numbers of 2014 reveal that Spanish telecommunications of fixed network opt for developing fibre networks arriving to every home or FTTH. Vodafone and Jazztel assigned 66% of their revenue to invest in this type of networks. Movistar, for its part, concluded the year with 10,3 millions of installed FTTH accesses. Nowadays, there are 13 234 km of shared sub-conducts.
However, the deploying of fixed networks is far from offering coverages similar to the traditional ones. The main reason is the expensive part of the construction and installation of the civil infrastructure.
March 2016
The CNMC published a short report on the telecommunications sector corresponding to March 2016. Some of the most relevant data are:
- FTTH lines increased in 159.316 and are already 3.6 millions of lines;
- DSL lines experienced a loss of 141.165 and 1.4 millions since March of the previous year;
- The mobile lines depot increased in March in 45.933 units.
- The total of fixed lines increased in 14.440, this places the total number in 18.85 millions, which means a penetration of 40,6 lines for every 100 inhabitants.
