How consolidation is reshaping Spain’s telecoms market in 2025

Luke Kehoe, January 13th, 2025

Spain continues to lead Europe in fibre rollout, but lagging mobile performance undermines country’s overall telecoms competitiveness

The dynamism of Spain’s telecoms market stood out among its European peers last year, with a flurry of mergers reshaping the market’s structure and strong investment in next-generation networks, supported by targeted government initiatives, improving outcomes for Spanish consumers. However, while increased fibre and 5G penetration have driven notable year-on-year improvements in overall network performance, Spain’s international competitiveness in telecoms remains highly imbalanced between its fixed and mobile infrastructure.

The country’s credentials as Europe’s preeminent fibre leader remain intact. In 2024, Spain ranked among the top three in the EU for fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) coverage (95.2%) and the share of fixed broadband subscriptions providing download speeds above 100 Mbps (93.5%), according to the latest edition of the European Commission’s ‘State of the Digital Decade’ report. This continues to position the country significantly ahead of some of the bloc’s largest economies, most notably Germany, which still lags in FTTP coverage (28.8%) due to a slow shift away from cable networks.

Analysis of Speedtest Intelligence® data reveals that median fixed download speeds in Spain increased from 173.32 Mbps to 210.46 Mbps between 2023 and 2024. This trend of improvement was mirrored across other fixed network performance metrics, with upload speeds increasing in the same period from 129.62 Mbps to 155.53 Mbps. In Q3 2024, DIGI achieved a median fixed download speed of 321.21 Mbps in the Spanish market, followed by Jazztel (273.18 Mbps), Orange (262.78 Mbps), Yoigo (255.74 Mbps) and Movistar (180.30 Mbps).

Having achieved exceptionally high levels of FTTP penetration across urban, suburban and rural areas—placing Spain among the top three in the European Commission’s DESI 2024 Index for FTTP coverage in sparsely populated rural areas—the focus in Spain is shifting toward enhancing quality of experience (QoE) in core use cases such as gaming and video streaming. Despite boasting higher FTTP coverage and take-up rates, Spain ranks below countries like France in Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index™. This disparity highlights the influence of factors such as Wi-Fi technology—France has a higher penetration of Wi-Fi 6 and 7 in ISP-provided CPE—and tariff provisioned speeds, with a larger share of fibre customers in France subscribing to multi-gigabit plans, on fixed broadband performance.

DIGI’s strong fixed download speed performance in Spain, detailed in Ookla’s Speedtest Connectivity Report for 1H 2024, is underpinned by similar favourable factors. Notably, it was first to market in Spain with a 10 Gbps service, fully leveraging its XGS-PON fibre infrastructure. With highly competitive pricing—starting at just €20 per month for 1 Gbps and €25 per month for 10 Gbps, including Wi-Fi 6 CPE as standard—DIGI has quickly secured a significant share of multi-gigabit capable connections in the Spanish market.

In addition to highlighting the importance of modern CPE and higher tariff-provisioned speeds, DIGI’s business last year exemplified the accelerating consolidation trends in Spain’s highly overbuilt and fragmented fibre market. The acquisition of DIGI’s fibre infrastructure by a Macquarie-led consortium, which solidified wholesale specialist Onivia’s status as the largest of the ‘neutral’ FTTP networks in Spain, dovetailed with developments such as Telefónica’s BlueVia wholesale spin-off, the emergence of MásOrange and Zegona-controlled Vodafone’s ‘FibreCo’ tie-ups with both Telefónica and MásOrange.

As observed in other European markets with significant fibre overbuild, such as the alt-net model in the UK, consolidation is a slow and challenging process. However, Spanish operators continue to pursue it to enhance the economics of their fibre investments in highly overbuilt urban areas, unlocking scale and resources to capture future growth in rural areas where overlapping infrastructure is less common. This begins with small local operators—of which there are hundreds—being absorbed by ‘local consolidators’. These are then integrated into the infrastructure portfolios of regional consolidators, ultimately leading to acquisition by one of the largest traditional players.

This gradual process of consolidation is reshaping the fibre business model in Spain, as traditional operators separate their infrastructure and service units to support the growth of wholesale offerings. The coming year will provide some insight into whether a consolidated third player can successfully compete and coexist alongside the vertically integrated Telefónica and MásOrange in the long-term.

MásOrange is vying for network leadership in Spain, founded on a significant spectrum advantage

The winds of consolidation have swept through the Spanish mobile market too, culminating last year in the European Commission’s approval of a 50:50 joint venture between MásMóvil and Orange. The merger has pole-vaulted the newly formed ‘MásOrange’ into a leading position in the market, both in subscription and spectrum share. To secure regulatory approval from Brussels, the merging entity committed to divesting 60 MHz of spectrum, including 20 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band, to facilitate the entry of DIGI as a fully-fledged independent mobile operator, effectively restoring the Spanish market to a four-player structure and ‘exerting a strong competitive constraint on the joint venture’.

In addition to diversifying its portfolio of brands through the merger—with Orange and Yoigo catering to the premium segment, Jazztel and MásMóvil focusing on value for money and regional brands like Euskaltel and Telecable serving local needs—MásOrange hopes its consolidated spectrum assets will enable it to achieve network leadership in the Spanish mobile market.

The merged entity’s consolidated network will be primarily based on Orange’s infrastructure, complemented by MásMóvil’s existing site portfolio and the deployment of new greenfield sites. The integration of MásMóvil’s network, which relies entirely on mid- and high-band spectrum and has historically depended on a national roaming agreement with Orange, creates a natural synergy for the merged entity. It enables the integrated network to leverage MásMóvil’s capacity and density in urban areas alongside Orange’s extensive coverage and nationwide reach.

MásOrange is particularly focused on vying to unseat Movistar’s dominance in the premium segment, a position it has long upheld thanks to its emphasis on superior network quality. Movistar emerged as the fastest mobile operator in the Spanish market in Ookla’s Speedtest Connectivity Report for 1H 2024, delivering the highest median download speeds of 82.68 Mbps.  This placed Movistar significantly ahead of Orange (56.42 Mbps) and Yoigo (36.73 Mbps).

The merged entity’s spectrum advantage is heavily weighted toward mid- and high-bands, which are typically utilised for 5G deployments in urban and suburban areas. According to data published by MásOrange, it holds 37% of all mid- and high-band assets in the Spanish market—compared to 28% and 26% for its closest competitor, Telefónica—giving it a unique opportunity to enhance 5G speed performance and gain a competitive edge.

Movistar has maintained its strong 5G speed performance with a 100 MHz allocation in the 3.5 GHz band, but this is now overshadowed by MasOrange’s expanded allocation of 170 MHz. Capital investment by the merged entity in upgrading the 5G RAN to support advanced carrier aggregation (CA) capabilities and the standalone (SA) architecture will enable it to fully realise the performance benefits of wider channel bandwidth through the extensive deployment of its 3.5 GHz spectrum across its consolidated mobile site grid.

To establish network leadership in coverage, however, MásOrange will need to move beyond its spectrum advantage and focus on increasing the number of physical sites in rural areas within its integrated network. In Q3 2024, Vodafone and Movistar recorded 4G Availability of 95.1% and 93.4% respectively in the Spanish market, followed by Orange at 92.7% and Yoigo at 91.5%.

In parallel to MásOrange’s network consolidation journey, DIGI is building out its own infrastructure to gradually wean itself off dependence on a national roaming and RAN sharing agreement with Telefónica (which DIGI selected over MásOrange, despite both being options under the merger conditions), starting with urban and suburban areas. The European Commission designed the spectrum divestment remedies to position DIGI to replicate the competitive pressure previously exerted by MásMóvil. The goal is for DIGI to carry a similar share of its total mobile data traffic on its own network in the coming years, at least matching the 40-60% on-net share that MásMóvil achieved pre-merger.

More broadly, it is hoped that the substantial long-term investment commitments from DIGI and MásOrange, driven by the consolidation activity, combined with government support through programmes such as Unico, will bolster Spain’s international competitiveness in mobile performance in the coming years. The country has significant catching up to do, ranking 57th in the Speedtest Global Index at the end of 2024 and trailing most of its European peers across a suite of network performance metrics, including download speed, consistency and coverage.

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