A group of PS deputies, including Luís Graça, from the Algarve, questioned the Government about the state of telecommunications and internet coverage in the interior of the country.
In the question addressed to Pedro Nuno Santos, Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, the parliamentarians point out that, despite the advances made by the last two Governments of the Socialist Party, namely with the Action Plan for Digitization, the free distribution of computers and hotspots for students of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd cycle of studies and the National Plan for Territorial Cohesion, «there is still part of the territory whose poor access to the Internet or the sheer lack of a mobile network poses a serious obstacle to the personal and professional fulfillment of citizens, to the competitiveness economic development of these territories and the process of digitizing public services'.
“On the new digital highways, no one can be left behind”, they say.
In the letter to the Ministry supervised by Pedro Nuno Santos, PS parliamentarians refer that, «in the municipalities on the coast of the country, they have an efficiency of 90%, while, in rural areas, this same efficiency decreases to 63,9% », according to a study by ANACOM, of September 2020, concerning mobile communications.
«With the recent 5G Auction and the promise of a public tender, using funds from Portugal 2030, to provide broadband to the territories of the Interior that were in the so-called 'white zones', a new chapter of valorization of the territories was opened. cross-border and low population density, highlighting the Government's vision for the suppression of inequalities between the different regions of the country», consider the signatories of the question.
Recalling that the executive instructed ANACOM to collect updated information on the coverage of public electronic communications networks in the national territory and to prepare the tender specifications for tender procedures, the Socialist deputies question whether the existing needs are already known, in particular in low-density areas, in terms of network coverage, both fixed and mobile, with very high capacity.
The question also asks whether the Government is aware of the existence of «fiber optic structures placed in areas of low population density that do not have an adequate connection to housing units, due to the operators' responsibility».
"What is the Government's estimate so that we can have the country's interior and cross-border band fully covered through optical fiber" and what measures is it taking to "compensate for the lack of a mobile network in certain rural areas of the country, where it is not even possible to make the emergency call (112)', PS deputies also want to know.
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