Telefónica
O
n any visit to Spain, it’s impossible not to notice the presence of Telefónica. This is the institutional face of Spain’s principal telecommunications company which is presented to both the business and domestic sectors through the ubiquitous Movistar brand. Since 2006, O2, another of the bigger players in the cellular mobile market, has also been part of the Telefónica family. In fact these days, Telefónica has moved a long way from what was once a purely national operation, set up in 1924 as CTNE with the aid of ITT. At the end of World War II, the business was effectively nationalised with the Spanish government taking 79.6 percent of CTNE shares and by the 1960s, CTNE had become the #1 Spanish enterprise with 32,000 employees. By the time the Spanish government sold its shareholding and Telefónica had returned to completely public hands in 1999, the business was already international with interests principally in South America but also in key markets throughout Europe and the Far East. Today it operates in 25 countries and has a workforce of 287,000, generating revenues of €63 billion. Telefónica is well and truly one of the leading integrated telecommunication providers, ranked 6th largest among terrestrial mobile phone network operators as measured by number of subscribers. As of June 2012, Telefónica’s total number of customers amounted to 311.8 million and of these, more than 75 per cent came from outside its home market.
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