Projects about Broadband Europe

Rede Aberta is the first Spanish broadband project to be funded by the Connecting Europe Broadband Fund (CEBF). To promote economic growth, stop depopulation and rejuvenate the population of rural Galicia, the open access network will bring 10 Gbps symmetrical fibre connectivity to 400,000 homes. In this video, Pere Antentas, Rede Aberta CEO, explains that the project will help the population take advantage of the area’s “enormous growth potential” and natural resources. It “will allow the telecommunication networks and services to be at the same level as the ones in the big cities of Europe”.

In order to bring significant improvement to the digitalisation of the cargo and cruising industry in the North of Europe, the German regional Broadband Competence Office (BCO) of Lower Saxony launched a mobile connectivity project deploying 5G infrastructure in the Bay of Germany in the North Sea. As Peer Beyersdorff explains in this video, conditions at sea and the Earth’s curvature make mobile telecommunication challenging. The project serves one of the busiest sea routes in the world, enabling safer passage, more reliable communication and important services for both trade and tourism.

The 230 households, farms and small businesses spread out over 44 square kilometres in the remote municipality of Hammikeln, in the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia, felt a great need for high-speed connectivity in order to continue to live and work in the area. The low population density, however, meant that there was no commercial interest from private telecom companies. As a result, the area’s four local communities decided to build their own gigabit-speed fibre network themselves, in partnership with a local utility company.

The Sarantaporo.gr project began when a small group of young people, from the remote Thessaly mountains in central Greece, returned home to realise that their village still had no internet access. Telecom companies had no interest in investing to bring the necessary infrastructure there, so the group set out to create a wireless community network for almost 3,500 people in 12 isolated mountain villages. To stimulate demand and uptake, the project’s volunteers provide training and support. The €156,000 project was 59% EU-funded and won a European Broadband Award in 2019.

In rural communities in Lower Austria, where telecom companies had not invested for 15 years, the State took action, creating a company dedicated to bringing broadband access to over 450,000 people. Vice President of the nöGIG company, Igor Brusic, explained: “Without broadband, the inhabitants and companies are forced to move from these rural areas to urban ones. Investing or building up a financial structure and attracting capital for rural areas is something that makes this project unique”. This project was a finalist in the 2019 European Broadband Awards.

In the German state of Baden-Württemberg, the District of Calw is a rural region encompassing 25 towns over 800 km2 of hills and valleys in the Black Forest. The challenging terrain makes the deployment of broadband cables both complicated and expensive. Many areas in the region are underserved as a result. In 2017, the District began a broadband initiative to connect its 25 communities with a 386 km Next Generation Access (NGA) backbone network, as well as mobile coverage via masts. Both federally and regionally funded, the project reduced costs by re-using existing infrastructure.

The Italian region of Emilia Romagna launched a free public WiFi network with 5000 hotspots across the region’s towns and mountains, with a density of one hotspot for every 1000 people. In an effort to close the digital divide and give all citizens the opportunity to access the internet and online services, hotspots were created in public spaces including sports centres, hospitals, libraries and beaches. The hotspots offer potential speeds of up to 1 Gbps, as each is connected via fibre optic cable.

The Latvian State Radio and Television Centre obtained EU funding in order to bring broadband connectivity to rural areas in Latvia where there was no commercial interest in investing. A passive middle mile backbone network was built, bringing fibre access to a total of 150,000 properties. The project was 85% funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and was a finalist in the 2018 European Broadband Awards.

In the rural Croatian community of Drnje, the community council decided to co-finance the creation of a Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network in order to bring over 100 Mbps connectivity to local businesses, citizens and public entities. This co-financing enabled the transformation of the original plan for broadband development in the area, in which a local Internet Service Provider had intended to build a wireless network offering maximum speeds of only 30 Mbps. The local mayor made this decision because high-speed broadband is essential for encouraging young people to build their lives there.

85% funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, the PRIP2 project’s goal was to bring Next Generation Access to agri-businesses in rural areas where there was no connectivity and no commercial interest in providing it. Through 342.6 km of optic fibre infrastructure, PRIP2 provided the ‘backbone’ necessary to bring service providers to these areas, where they only need to build the ‘last mile’ connection to end users. These customers – farmer homesteads, food processing companies and other agricultural business centres – then have the choice of operators and services.