Catalonia strengthens its mobile coverage with a new public-private protocol

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The Government of Catalonia has reached an agreement with telecommunications operators and municipal associations to address mobile coverage problems that primarily affect the most rural areas of the country. This initiative is materialized in a new action protocol, called TelcoCat, which focuses on transparency, public-private cooperation and access to information, and whose main objective is to ensure that the entire Catalan population has access to an internet connection, regardless of where they live.

The new protocol allows for classification and response to potential failures in the mobile phone supply according to their severity. This promotes faster and better coordinated response between local governments, the Generalitat (Catalan government), and mobile operators. The initiative stems from complaints filed by several municipalities after experiencing prolonged outages during the Christmas holidays, especially in areas of the Pyrenees, which harmed economic activity by even preventing electronic payments.

Step-by-step incident management based on scope

The model establishes the existence of three levels of incidence, each with its own response mechanism. The first addresses localized failures that the municipalities themselves can manage directly with the telecom operators through designated communication channels.

The second, aimed at broader failures or those affecting several municipalities, activates the direct intervention of the Generalitat and promotes a centralized technical coordinationIn the most serious cases, such as massive outages affecting essential services or critical infrastructure, the third level is activated. Here Both institutional officials from the Government and company executives come into play. involved to respond within hours.

In addition, the need has been established update the information every four hours while the incident remains active. Once the problem is resolved, the closure must be reported to the municipal authorities within one hour.

Municipal participation and the new InfoConnecta platform

One of the most notable developments is that, for the first time, city councils will have access to direct and updated information on the status of the network and incidents affecting their territory. This step makes local governments active players within the regional connectivity ecosystem.

To facilitate the monitoring of incidents, the digital platform will be launched at the end of this year. InfoConnecta. This tool will enable a real time display operational problems, allowing both the Generalitat and municipalities to be informed and to communicate any failure more quickly.

All of this is part of a working model that aims to provide stability to cooperation between the public and private sectors, avoiding the previous situation in which mayors had no technical contact to resolve coverage outages and left their residents without clear answers.

Fiber optics for all municipalities

In parallel with the development of the TelcoCat protocol, the Government continues to advance in the deployment of the public fiber optic network, a key project to achieve the goal of total connectivity. This year it is expected to exceed 8.000 kilometers of network deployed and get to 738 municipalities connected.

The Catalan executive's strategy also includes the linking of all the services and public offices to the own network. According to forecasts, a total of 6.164 public centers will be connected by 2031. This step will not only guarantee an improvement in the quality of their digital communications, but will also mean a estimated economic savings of 40% compared to current connectivity costs.

The Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, stressed that "aiming for 100% coverage is not a luxury, but a necessary condition for economic, social, and territorial development." In his words, this protocol moves "from managing a problem to having a clear roadmap to address it." It also includes the possibility of change mobile operator to improve coverage and service in rural areas.

These measures are intended to promote progress in regional connectivity, reducing inequalities between urban and rural areas and ensuring a robust and reliable communications network for all residents.