The company paid a total of €350 million for the spectrum, underpinning its commitment to the extension of its 5G coverage in Spain.
According to the company, the news means that on a consolidated basis Orange is operator with the largest amount of spectrum in the two priority bands for the deployment of 5G. This is due to the fact that Orange also has 110MHz in the 3.5GHz band (3.4-3, 8GHz) for which it invested a total of €523 million to acquire it.
As a result, Orange is positioned to offer higher 5G speeds in Spain and already has plans to continue to deploy this advanced mobile network, which already covers 442 municipalities in 38 provinces as of Q1 of 2021 and expects to offer 5G coverage to more than 50% of the Spanish population before the end of the year.
“This 700MHz band is key for the development of 5G SA and its use by the operators will favour a full use of all the advantages that it will make possible," said Mónica Sala (pictured), general director of Red in Orange Spain.
"This technology to promote the recovery of the economy through the digital transformation of society and the productive fabric of the country. Furthermore, this band will be essential to reduce the territorial digital divide in Spain."
According to a study carried out by Systemics-PAB in which it verified the performance of 5G network services in the Telefónica, Orange and Vodafone networks in cities across Spain, Orange was found to be the fastest network with the highest average download speed at 156.6Mbps. The highest maximum speeds were also obtained on the Orange network and exceeded 623Mbps.
In related news, earlier this month Orange resumed its services in the Central African Republic more than three weeks after its network core and data centre in Bangui were destroyed in a fire.
