Catalonia cooks up a $500 million Muni Ethernet
The project Generalitat de Catalunya (the Government of Catalonia) and Localret (a consortium of 782 municipalities) will roll out a $500 million fiber network that will sell wholesale service to other providers.
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Hi from Catalonia!
Nice to know that information about this initiative in your blog!.
I am responsible for advanced Grid Computing R+D at the i2cat Foundation (http://www.i2cat.net) and, after years of hard work in bringing projects like this into light, it is a pleasure to see news reaching out to the wider broadband community.
Hard work with Localret consortium has been a crucial factor. The consortium managed to build a critical mass of interested municipalities and also lobbied hard against the interest of other stakeholders.
The new Catalan government has understood the strategical importance of this infrastructure and is keen on leading Catalonia to the top European rankings in connectivity and broadband.
This is part of a wider strategy aimed at improving value creation from local pockedts of knowledge mainly in the services sector, ICT R+D (fastest supercomputer in Europe located in Barcelona as well as an important experimental broadband network for innovation, i2cat.net and other ICT research and innovation facilities).
This is just part of a wider strategy for switching the catalan economy to create value from high-tech local knowledge pockets. Currently this has two clear flagships projects, the Bioregion (Biotech) and the Technoregion (ICT) under the umbrella of the new transnational administrative space the includes part of South of France, Catalonia and other mediterranean regions in Spain.
Stay tuned for further news from here!