Soon it will be possible to connect to the Internet from anywhere in Spain. Or at least that is the objective of the Program for the Universalization of Digital Infrastructures for Cohesion, UNICO, for its acronym. This initiative, financed with 84 million euros from the funds of the Government Recovery Plan, wants to bring satellite Internet to predominantly rural areas of the country that lack the necessary infrastructure to adhere to the majority networks such as fiber optics or 5G .
Hispasat that has been awarded the service, endowed with 76 million euros. The company will be in charge of connecting users and teleoperators to provide an Internet connection service with 100 Mbps download speed and 5 Mbps upload speed, values that will double from January 2024. But what should you know before to hire this service?
The winning bidder reveals that it is currently possible to have satellite Internet with 10 Mbps in 73% of the national territory. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation has prepared this map with the areas that meet the requirements to have this service and, therefore, are eligible to access the program. Enter the name of your municipality in the search engine or zoom in on the cartography to refine your query. If your town appears marked in blue, it means that you would have at least 50 Mbps of download speed.
The installation kit consists of a satellite dish between 74 and 90 cm high (depending on whether you live on the peninsula and the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands), a Tria/ODU tuner (HB210-L), a satellite modem and the coaxial cable that will carry the connection to your home.
Installation is a quick and easy process. The complete equipment has a total cost of 600 euros, of which the client will not have to pay anything, since the subsidy to Hispasat covers all the expenses of registering the clients.
This service has a total cost for the final consumer of 35 euros per month, taxes included. This fee will remain unchanged during the term of the award, which ends on December 31, 2027.
This is probably the easiest management of the entire process. Get in touch with your telephone operator or use the search engine for collaborating entities available on the Hispasat website. It will be with them that you should start the hiring process. As a curiosity, each retail operator receives 16.68 euros per month for each service it distributes.
Yes, rural satellite Internet has some limitations. The service has a limit of 150 GB of data per month. Once consumed, connectivity will be slower, although it is possible for the user to contract additional data with their telemarketer. In return, the data consumed between 1 and 6 in the morning are not taken into account for the monthly calculation.