The crisis unleashed by COVID-19 has dealt a blow and led to a disruptive paradigm shift for the entire productive and workforce fabric on a global scale. And also for the framework in which Spanish business activity takes place.

The reality of remote working has now come to the fore and, along with all the other challenges that come with it, also represents an incredible opportunity to improve the competitive position of the national business community. But is the country prepared to take advantage of this opportunity by providing assurances? Can Spanish data connectivity drive the country to a leading international position in the field of remote working?

Without doubt, Spain has all the best possible conditions for success. In fact, it can easily compete on an equal footing with global superpowers like Japan and South Korea in terms of connectivity. Spain has more than ten million Fibre to the Home (FTTH) connections. This means more high‑capacity Internet access points than other European countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and France combined^[1].

The main population centres – the big cities – offer 80% of the country’s fixed broadband lines with 30 Mbps or greater capacity. More than eleven million Spanish households have high-speed Internet connections – 100 Mbps, or even faster. This scenario lays the perfect groundwork to fully exploit all the potential represented by remote working.

The biggest challenges: fibre optic in ‘emptied Spain’ and a new corporate culture

Despite the excellent starting conditions, remote working in the post COVID-19 era also comes with its own particular challenges. On the one hand, owing to low penetration in corporate culture of standardised remote working dynamics, as well as the resources required for it. According to data from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE), just 36% of Spanish SMEs – organisations with ten employees or fewer – offer remote access to basic tools, such as emails, documents and company software.

This means 91.5% of Spanish workers do not routinely work away from their offices or workstations. Although our ‘new normal’ may have changed these figures considerably, significant investment will still be needed in data connectivity infrastructure alongside, above all, considerable work on education around the productive and resource optimisation benefits of working remotely.

In fact, taking advantage of a solid high-capacity connectivity network, beyond the main population centres, represents the other half of the equation when it comes to Spain’s challenges in both the short- and medium-term. So-called ‘emptied Spain’, where workers are locked down at home away from their desks, has all the perfect conditions for modifying the paradigms of remote working, decreasing the habits of workplace ‘presenteeism’ and forever changing the way we understand and experience work.

But to achieve this, data connectivity is essential. Taking advantage of the thousands of kilometres of fibre optic available but not currently in use will help turn Spain into a true powerhouse of connectivity and remote working.

Establishing strategic lines of collaboration between a leading dark fibre operator, such as Lyntia, and various stakeholders in the communications sector is the logical and smartest next step within the context of our ‘new normal’. Telephony operators can extend their scope, through FTTH and 5G technology, to places across Spain where there are still infinite possibilities for developing new lines of business.

The smartest move right now would be to take advantage of the data connectivity opportunities offered by Spanish infrastructure AND through synergies with a dark fibre operator, ensuring there’s more bandwidth for offering very high capacity Internet services. As well as guaranteeing that, with high-quality fibre optic, all the scenarios posed by remote working can come to fruition with a greater scale of development.