Molinaseca is a small town in León, very close to Ponferrada, through which the Camino de Santiago passes. And, if it weren’t for the hundreds of pilgrims who pass through there every day, surely Molinaseca would be simply one of the many anonymous points on the map that continue to lose population year after year.
Elvira was born there 81 years ago, and things have changed a lot since then. Now he looks at the mobile in his hand and has almost forgotten that time when the news never reached his town. Or they were too late.
Elvira, whom everyone calls “Coqui”, remembers that first telephone that was in Trina’s house, the first neighbor in town to have a fixed line. Neighbors came to his house when there was an emergency, and there the notices for all the inhabitants of the town arrived. Some time later they installed a booth in the local bar and a few years later, the telephone finally reached all homes and was a small revolution for the inhabitants of this small town in León. Now, Elvira cannot do without her mobile and is always connected with her children and grandchildren, who left town in search of job opportunities and only return from year to year.
Telephony and internet, essential in the towns
For all those peoples affected by depopulation, having a good telecommunications system is of utmost importance. Both for people like Elvira, with all her relatives living in other municipalities or even abroad, as well as for entrepreneurs who want to settle in the territory, having a good internet connection is essential.
Castilla y León is the largest autonomous community in Spain, with an area of 94,226 km² and has a high number of towns, more than 6,000, widely dispersed and distant from each other. Most of them are very small municipalities with an aging population – it is the second autonomous community with the highest aging rate in Spain – and with a major problem due to the rapid depopulation they are experiencing . If we add to this a complex orography and climatology, the result is an area that is a challenge for the deployment of telecommunications infrastructures.
Since its birth in 1924, Telefónica has always had a clear commitment to bring communication to all corners of our country . The first deployments of airlines, in the 1920s, gave way to pioneering technologies at the time, such as the PC-32 automatic switching center in 1969, which allowed the automation of calls and that the telephone reached all houses in rural settings. Then came the mobile and fiber network deployments throughout the territory.
Today, six out of every ten inhabitants of the Castilla y León region have fiber optics and 92% have 4G coverage , which means that the joint coverage of fiber plus 4G is well above other European regions in the countries of our environment such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy or Germany.
“The mission, values and objectives of Telefónica have always been the development of society, and this cannot be understood if it is not carried out in all places equally. Today, we have a serious depopulation problem in Spain in rural areas. Added to this is the difficulty of bringing certain services there. At Telefónica we want to promote and facilitate that this type of services are the same as in an urban environment, guaranteeing their quality and thus promoting the development of these areas, helping their citizens to carry out their activities, both work and recreational activities, and also providing companies with the means they need to establish themselves in rural areas with the same means that they would have in an urban environment ”, tells us Javier Pascual, Director of Engineering at Telefónica de España.
The Smart Rural Territory project
Smart Rural Territory is a pioneering project in Europe, which aims to implement Internet of Things solutions in rural areas to optimize the provision of public services – lighting, garbage collection, etc.- in the same way that is already being done with smart cities projects.
“ Without a doubt one of the greatest difficulties that small municipalities have is the provision of public services in an efficient way . The scarcity of resources, both economic and human, makes it very difficult to meet the basic needs of residents by adapting to the limited municipal budgets, explains María Victoria Seco, General Director of Telecommunications of the Junta de Castilla León.
The Smart Rural Territory project is based on three pillars: firstly, the installation of a series of sensors that collect different data (from lights, waste containers, electrical panels for water control, etc.) .
Second, Telefónica’s Thinking Cities software platform, which analyzes all this data. Finally, the big data application that will allow local authorities to be offered precise information about the operation of these services, so that they can better control them and make the most appropriate decisions.
Molinaseca: an IoT laboratory
The town of Elvira has been one of the municipalities chosen for this pioneering Smart Rural Territory project. “At Molinaseca we have implemented two types of solutions. One for smart waste management and the other for smart lighting. In the case of waste management, sensors have been installed in various containers, and only when they are full are they sent to the garbage truck to empty them . If a container is not full, the truck does not move. With this solution we manage to save on travel expenses and CO 2 emissions ”, Javier explains.
“Then we have developed an idea as simple as saving on lighting. The lighting of the entrance areas to the town of the Camino de Santiago is at very low levels all night, so that less energy is consumed, but when the presence sensors installed detect the passage of someone, the lighting environment automatically rises , and then go down again . As we can see, there are two solutions that allow a reduction in the costs of these public services, achieving the efficiency we are looking for ”, explains the Telefónica expert.
Elena Fernández is a councilor for the Molinaseca City Council. He tells us that this new technology has attracted much attention from residents and highlights the importance that new technologies can have in rural areas. “I believe that these types of advances are the great revolution for the 21st century for rural municipalities. On the one hand, it will help to establish a young population in our towns. On the other, with the savings in lighting and garbage collection, the city council will be able to invest in other needs that the town has. Definitely all this technological innovation is going to improve our lives a lot ”.
Smart way of Santiago
More and more travelers decide to do the Camino de Santiago. They come from many parts of Spain, and more and more foreigners decide to get to know that other Spain that does not usually appear in the guides. For this reason, in Molinaseca every summer Americans, Italians, Koreans, French come together … no one is surprised to hear English spoken in the town square or to see people communicate by gestures with the bar waiter.
All these people who arrive have very different profiles: some will spend the night in the pilgrims’ hostel, others will prefer the comfort of a hotel with a private bathroom … some will eat a sandwich, others will try to try the famous Maragato stew in the town’s restaurants. What if we were able to predict how all those tourists are going to behave in order to know which services will be the most in demand in the town?
That’s where LUCA, Telefónica’s big data unit, comes into play. ” Big data can be a great promoter of tourism because it allows these localities to anticipate what the tourist who is going to come like is, get to know them better, and through that better knowledge offer them what they really need, ” says Elena Díaz, Global Analytics Center of Excellence Delivery Manager at LUCA, Telefónica. “In the case of the Camino de Santiago, we have made an analysis from two perspectives. In the first place, from the sociodemographic point of view: how are the people who are in a certain place, their gender, their age, their purchasing power, their place of residence, for example, the province from which the national pilgrims come and including the country of origin of internationals. Second, from the point of view of their behavior in the destinations: how long they usually spend in each of the municipalities, whether they spend the night in them or not, etc. ”, Elena continues.
In this way, municipalities can foresee the number of hotel beds or how many available beds they will need in the hostels in each period, which languages the tourist offices should speak, etc. Another application that big data projects have is, for example, analyzing the routes between different destinations. It is possible to know if there are enough lines of transport between two municipalities in certain seasons, or if there are some left over. This allows municipalities to adapt means of transport according to the real needs of the population.
“At LUCA, we strongly believe in the possibilities of big data and artificial intelligence to help the development and sustainability of rural areas. Ultimately, it is about using big data to make better decisions, connect and energize these rural areas and help them develop the most appropriate strategies to promote tourism ”, concludes Elena Gil, CEO of LUCA.
Preserve our heritage
Very linked to rural tourism, but also to the memory and culture of the people, is heritage, which is part of the essential values and identity of Castilla y León. Archaeological sites, Romanesque, Mudejar, Gothic art … all ages of man have left their mark on this territory. Is it possible to help preserve it with new technologies? Of course!
As an example, a pioneering project is the Villa Romana de la Olmeda, in Palencia. This Roman Villa, from the 1st century, was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in 1996 and is considered one of the twelve greatest discoveries of modern archeology.
“We take advantage of IoT technology through a series of sensors that we place throughout the space, in aerial areas, but also in buried areas. We are in an archaeological site and these devices allow us to obtain real-time data on the parameters that affect the conservation of this type of building. The most significant are the environmental parameters: humidity conditions, temperature … But also the parameters that have to do with solar radiation, with the intensity of light, with the quality of the air, the amount of CO 2 , etc. ”Explains Juan Carlos Prieto, Head of Heritage at the Santa María la Real Foundation, the organization in charge of managing this site. ” They also provide us with other types of information, such as the number of people who enter the building at each time of the year, or other types of data that allow us to know if energy efficiency is being worked with excellence or not “,
The 67 devices deployed send information in real time to Telefónica’s intelligent platform, which transforms all this data into knowledge, allowing those responsible for management to act in real time and make the necessary decisions for the correct conservation of the deposit based on scientific data. “From my point of view, this tool represents a before and after in the heritage conservation sector. We have gone from being a purely academic sector, where knowledge comes from tradition and experience, to working with knowledge that comes from data and scientific controls, through the most modern technological tools. This allows us to know exactly, with scientific rigor, what is happening to this building, how it beats at all times. And all these data will also allow us to implement much more successful actions for improvement or conservation in the coming years ”, concludes this expert.
Low consumption technologies: Narrow band and LTM
One of the greatest difficulties in bringing technology solutions to towns lies in their profitability: it is necessary to keep devices in very remote or inaccessible areas and that the cost of changing the battery does not exceed the installation of the sensors. For this, Telefónica has relied on new connectivity technologies that are highly oriented to low energy consumption.
“Unlike today’s mobile technologies, Narrow band and LTM technologies are energy efficient technologies. They allow the devices to have a long life and that the batteries do not have to be changed frequently. And they also manage to transmit the data in small packets, which is what we need for this type of solution. This is the main challenge we have in the world of IoT and until now it was the main obstacle when it comes to assembling efficient solutions and managing all the sensors that we put in remote sites. It is cheaper to install the device and buy it than having to constantly change batteries. That is why we can do all this deployment efficiently thanks to these new connectivity technologies ”, explains the Director of Engineering at Telefónica Spain.
A push to go back to town
Elvira, “Coqui”, has it clear: in the town you live better. And, if the towns are being left empty, it is because of the lack of opportunities. “It is a pity that the town is almost without people. Let’s see if with the arrival of technology, young people are encouraged to return to Molinaseca, which is great in the towns ”, he tells us.
That is the bet of Telefónica. “I believe that this bet, like so many others of Telefónica in these areas, will allow the towns to revitalize themselves. All these technological deployments will allow us to access the same services that exist in urban areas. And they will also help to promote new forms of economy. I definitely believe that they are bets that help development and improve the lives of citizens in rural areas ”, concludes Javier Pascual.
Meanwhile, like every morning, Coqui returns to the garden, where at 81 he continues to work. Of course, with your mobile in your pocket in case any of your children call from the city.
