Development project to give all of Greece access to the Internet – It may have taken several years for our country to… adapt to the new "internet imperatives" of the era, however, something has begun to appear on the horizon as, in recent times, the implementation of the broadband infrastructure development project in remote areas of Greece has been underway.
The Project aims to reduce the “broadband gap” between the disadvantaged areas of Greece. According to the Information Society, the Project, which began in 2015 and has a two-year completion horizon, aims to reduce the “broadband gap” between the most disadvantaged areas of Greece, which are characterized as white rural areas, and the areas of the rest of the country where broadband services are already offered.
Upon its completion, fast internet connection will be offered to the residents of 5,493 rural and island areas, where until now there was no financial interest in investment from telecommunications service providers, thus depriving their residents of the ability to access the internet.
The Project during its implementation presents several peculiarities due to certain technical, geographical and socio-economic reasons that are directly related to the profile of the so-called white rural areas.
There has been a failure of the market to reliably deliver broadband services in these areas. The main reasons for the lack of such services are the significant lack of infrastructure required to support the provision of broadband services and the significant costs required to deploy such infrastructure in these areas. Given the low population density, these costs are significantly higher in terms of unit prices (e.g. cost per connection) compared to more densely populated and urban areas.
At the same time, the proportionally lower purchasing power of the potential customer base, due to various socio-economic reasons, and the reluctance of private broadband service providers to invest in these areas have been inhibiting factors for investment in the Project to date, since they do not consider them economically viable.
The main objective of the project is the adequate broadband coverage of these areas, in order to gradually meet the goal of "total broadband coverage" set by the Digital Agenda 2020, according to the EU Commission's communication on the "Digital Agenda for Europe", where high population coverage should be considered a key priority, but wide geographical coverage is also crucial, in order to achieve the ability to access broadband services to the entire population by 2020. Also, the ability to provide affordable and at the same time reliable broadband services in these areas in relation to the services already provided in the most densely populated areas, minimizes the risk of creating a new "broadband gap" in the future.
The project's individual objectives are the development of a strong and resilient network infrastructure that will be able to support medium-term and long-term penetration goals, in accordance with the Digital Agenda 2020, as well as the expected gradual increase in service speeds, without devaluing the initial investment, having the possibility of upgrading over time.
This Project results in encouraging competition, preventing any individual provider from gaining special advantages over the others, as well as adequate state control of the network's operating principles.
The creation of such a network essentially contributes to the economic development of these usually underdeveloped areas and contributes to the reduction of the phenomenon of urban sprawl as well as to the provision of equal opportunities in terms of access to electronic public and non-public services, telemedicine services, e-learning and more generally access to digital content for which high access speeds are required.
Source: zougla.gr
