Adif, the public entity in charge of managing railway infrastructures, plans to deploy a 5G telephone network on several of the most recent AVE lines. After a contest to find the operators that are going to take charge of the lines, Adif decided to exclude Telefónica’s candidacy from the future contract; tendered for a maximum value of 119.6 million euros.
Given the high influx of passengers that travel through the main Spanish AVE lines, these lines have no problems when it comes to covering most of the length of the tracks with telephone coverage: the operators are interested in exploiting the telecommunications infrastructure. But the same does not happen with the railway corridors with less passenger demand; hence Adif proposed a contest to promote the construction, maintenance and operation of future 5G networks.
Telefónica loses the option to a contract of 119.6 million euros
The tender tendered by Adif plans the construction of a new telecommunications network in five AVE corridors that still do not have voice and data coverage under 5G: Albacete-Alicante, Antequera-Granada, Barcelona-Figueres, Olmedo-Ourense and Plasencia-Cáceres-Badajoz. The contract is divided into several lots for a total of 119.6 million euros.
Adif received requests from Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange to take over the construction of the networks, their maintenance, management and also the future commercial exploitation. Divided into lots according to the railway brokers, Adif decided to exclude Telefónica from the tender due to an error in the information sent by the operator.
As we can read in media such as Expansión, Telefónica was excluded from future 5G networks in the aforementioned railway corridors due to a form factor in the information submitted to access the contract: Adif considered that Telefónica did not meet the requirements specified in the bidding documents. Specifically, the operator included information that should not be attached. We don’t know what it was.
After Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange were excluded, they will opt for lot 1 (Plasencia-Cáceres-Badajoz and Antequera-Granada), lot 2 (Olmedo-Ourense) would remain in the hands of Orange (only this operator has presented itself) and lot 3 ( Albacete-Alicante and Barcelona-Figueras) would go to Vodafone (sole candidacy). The contract reaches a maximum amount of 119.6 million euros for the three lots; with a term of exploitation of 36 months and extendable for 12 more months.
Via | Expansion
Images | Adif, Telefonica