Broadband in Barcelona: reality and trends

In this article we analyse Barcelona’s broadband. To start with, maybe you are asking yourself: what is broadband? So, we want to start answering this question, thus you can understand better the article, in collaboration with Inés Rey de Olano (Pompeu Fabra University).

Broadband is a high-speed connection to the internet. Before broadband exists, internet access was achieved with ‘narrowband’ up connections that were very slow by today’s standards. Broadband is quicker and allows us to do more on the internet

The Spanish evolution of broadband

We will try to answer the many questions that arise when talking about broadband in Spain, in collaboration with John McAulay Solé. The internet appeared in the country for the first time in the early 1990s: the first Spanish commercial internet provider, Goya Servicios Telemáticos, was born in 1992, and only a year later the first Spanish web server started working in the Iberian country. 

Since then, internet has gone a very long way. In only a quarter of a century, it has gone from being an unknown futuristic concept to an element of every-day use. According to the Asociación de Usuarios de Internet, in 1996 there were only 320,000 internet users in Spain. Since then, that number has risen by more than 12,000% – up to 39.42 million users in 2018. Another interesting stat is the number of people who connect to the internet through their mobile phone. Last year, more than 35 million Spaniards used the internet through these devices, even though this is something which has only been possible since little over a decade ago.