Orange announces today the largest 5G network deployment plan in the 700 MHz band of an operator in Spain. The company will offer this technology progressively throughout 2022 to its customers in more than 1,100 municipalities, 820 of them with populations between 1,000 and 50,000 inhabitants. Likewise, 140 towns with less than 1,000 inhabitants, in 30 provinces, will also benefit from this new mobile network , thus helping to reduce the digital divide. In towns with more than 50,000 inhabitants , the company will deploy this technology in 140 municipalities.
The 700 MHz band is essential to obtain the greatest advantages of the 5G network that will boost the recovery of the economy through the digital transformation of society and the productive fabric of the country. In addition, this band is essential to reduce the territorial digital divide in Spain.
Nearly 200 municipalities in Madrid and Catalonia with 5G 700MHz
Thanks to this deployment, some thirty municipalities in the Community of Madrid, for example, will be able to enjoy the highest speed and download capacity, lower latency to play online and the possibility of connecting more devices to the mobile network simultaneously, as well from indoor locations, with maximum bandwidth availability.
These municipalities include Móstoles, Parla, Pinto, Alcalá de Henares, Fuenlabrada, Torrejón de Ardoz, Leganés and Alcobendas. Orange will also deploy 700 MHz 5G nodes in towns in the Madrid mountains such as San Lorenzo del Escorial, Colmenar Viejo, Collado Villalba and Soto del Real, making teleworking possible for the inhabitants of these municipalities.
In Catalonia , more than 160 towns will also enjoy these deployments; Castelldefels, Manresa, Mataró, Sabadell, Hospitalet de Llobregat and Terrasa among them. Smaller municipalities will also be able to take advantage of 5G technology in the 700 MHz band.
New development possibilities in the rural world
On the other hand, and in order to democratize access to the most advanced mobile networks, thus contributing to reduce the digital divide, Orange will deploy its 5G network in the 700 MHz band in some 960 municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants , registering 140 of them, located in 30 provinces, less than 1,000 inhabitants .
Municipalities such as Labajos in Segovia, Villoruebo in Burgos, Martinamor in Salamanca, Cirueña in La Rioja, Carboneros in Jaén or La Puebla de Valdivia in Palencia are just a few examples.
And it is that the new 5G technology has the ability to promote the development of the rural world, facilitating work on farms. Recently, Orange, together with Agroamb, Ericsson and Qampo, presented a pilot, within the framework of the 5G National Plan, based on the installation of sensors connected via 5G IoT in crop fields which, together with the use of satellite maps, allow Obtain timely information on the state of the farm and thus improve its performance.
Firm commitment to the most advanced mobile network
The announcement of this deployment in the 700MHz band represents another important milestone in the development of this new technology by the company and in its objective of accelerating its availability in all corners of our geography.
In September 2021, Orange put into operation its first 5G node in the 700 MHz band at the facilities of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, in order to provide service to the pilots that Orange is working on in the Valencian Community in the framework of the 5G National Plan.
The 700MHz band is essential to offer 5G coverage in 100% of the territory , due to the greater range offered by low frequencies and their greater indoor penetration capacity . This band will enable ultra-low latency services and allow the implementation of mIoT (massive IoT, massive machine-to-machine communications).
If we think about a future with autonomous vehicles, a ubiquitous network with low latency like the one that can be achieved with the 700MHz band is key. In the short term, it will serve to complement the 3.5GHz band that is already deployed, mainly improving the upstream data service (information sent from the user to the network) of 5G users.
In the last spectrum auction, Orange, which offers the fastest 5G network in Spain according to a study carried out by Systemics-PAB , obtained 2x10MHz in the 700MHz band, thus consolidating itself as the operator with the largest amount of spectrum in the two priority bands for the deployment of 5G technology , since it also has 110 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band. The company has invested a total of 523 million euros in the acquisition of these frequencies.
According to the latest data presented by the company, corresponding to September 2021, Orange 's 5G coverage already reaches more than half of the Spanish population and its customer base already reaches the figure of 620,000.