Brett Allan King

Faced with telecommunications giants offering free Net access, Spain’s smaller ISPs are crying “unfair competition” and coordinating a common strategy for survival. In the aftermath of free Internet access offers by the major telecommunications companies in June, many of the country’s 960 registered ISPs have claimed a threat to their livelihood. They now call national […]

Access to e-mail should become a public service available through the post office, Spain’s top Net users group stated this week. As part of a plan to promote greater Internet use throughout Spain, the Spanish Internet Users Association (AUI) proposed incorporating e-mail services into the national Postal and Telegraph service. Ideally, clients could send e-mail […]

In their ongoing fight for new customers, Spain’s telephone operators have launched a wave of free Internet access offers. Hailed as a major boost that will bring millions of Spaniards online by year’s end, the strategy is also decried as the death knell for the country’s smaller ISPs. The new Retevision telephone operator jolted the […]

Spain’s telecommunications giant will strengthen its Latin American presence by acquiring 51 percent of Colombia’s REY MORENO telephone operator, Telefónica, S.A. An agreement reached last week by Telefónica Data and the Colombian company paves the way for Telefónica Data Colombia, which will offer a wide range of integrated Internet, data and voice services to local […]

In a blow to cable operators, Spain’s top telecommunications firm has won authorization to integrate its Internet, telephony and television services. In response to a joint complaint filed in December against Telefónica, S.A. by Spain’s cable operators, the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) ruled that integration of the company’s services does not constitute unfair competition. The […]

Spanish cellular phone users can read e-mail with their eyes closed and respond with their hands free. Telefónica, S.A., Spain’s leading telephone operator, now offers the world’s first voice-based mobile e-mail service. With the Movistar Net service, cellular phone users can use their existing phones to listen to e-mail through text-to-voice conversion–and respond to those […]

The lopsided presence of English in cyberspace must end, and Spanish must take its natural place online, declared a group of Spanish intellectuals this week. “The vast majority of content on the Internet is in English, and that is something we should correct,” said Antonio Muñoz Molina, renowned author and member of the Royal Academy […]

After months of lobbying by Internet user groups, a Spanish government commission approved a flat Internet access rate on Friday. With the use of ADSL technology, the phone company will be able to distinguish data from voice calls–and users will be able to surf the Net at higher data transmission rates for a monthly phone […]

Two Goliaths of the Spanish online market have joined to form the world’s largest non-English language Internet portal–and a new global online force. An agreement signed this week by Telefonica Interactiva (part of the Grupo Telefonica) and Grupo Ole makes the Ole service the world’s leading provider of Spanish and Portuguese-language content–and puts it at […]

Spain will join France in asking the European Union to consider Internet access a “universal right”–like education and healthcare–thus allowing financed access at an “accessible price.” “Spain and France–once the EU telecommunications regulatory directives are up for revision–will present a joint proposal to introduce what we could sum up as ‘Internet as universal utility,’” said […]

As Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar told Net user groups this week that he worries about a Spanish slowdown in cyberspace, his public works minister announced plans for reduced Internet access rates. Addressing attendees at the Internet ’99 conference via a slightly jerky Netcast, Aznar said that despite his satisfaction with the spectacular growth […]

Thousands of Spaniards rushed into cyberspace in 1998, but they left their pocketbooks behind. Though Spain saw an increasingly wired population last year, users shied away from electronic commerce. “1998 was the great awakening for e-commerce in Europe, but still, unfortunately, not in Spain,” said Rodolfo Carpentier, president of CommerceNet Spain. “We’re well above the […]