Telefónica

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File:Telefonica building in Santiago Chile.jpg

Telefónica CTC Chile building in Santiago, Chile

Telefónica S.A. NYSE: TEF TYO: 9481is a Spanish telecommunications company. Telefonica is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the world (4th in terms of number of clients and 6th in total market value). It operates mainly in Spain and Latin America.

Telefónica was the only telephone operator in Spain, being a monopoly, since its creation in 1924 until 1997, when the government retired its total control over the corporation and Telefonica became a publicly owned company. Since then, it has held a dominant position in the liberalized Spanish market.

Due to its large market share (over 75% in 2004), Telefónica is still considered a de-facto monopoly in fixed telephony in Spain.

Businesses

Telefónica is the largest corporation in Spain and has a large presence in Latin America. It owns Telefónica de España, the largest fixed phone and ADSL operator in Spain, Telefónica Moviles (under the movistar brand name, moviline for analogic mobile phones), the largest mobile phone operator in Spain and Terra Networks, S.A., an Internet subsidiary, Telefónica Publicidad e Información, S.A. (TPI), the publisher of the Spanish Yellow Pages edition, etc.

Its largest operation in Latin America is in Brazil, where it serves broadband, local and long distance telephone services in the São Paulo state.

Telefónica operates movistar, the second-largest mobile phone operator in Mexico and the largest in Chile and Peru, and is currently engaged in a strong price war against number one operator Telcel.

The company also operates wireless phone services in many Latin American countries, under the movistar brand name, and owns 50% of Brazilian wireless operator [[Vivo (mobile phone network)|Vivo

Telefonica also has an operator in Morocco, Meditel.

Telefonica de Puerto Rico [1] is situated in one of Puerto Rico's most famous buildings (colored in yellow in accordance with the yellow pages' color), in Caparra, a section of San Juan. Telefonica de Puerto Rico survived a 2003 workers' strike.

Acquisitions

In 2005, Telefónica bought Český Telecom, Czech phone operator (with de-facto monopoly on land lines). Telefónica S.A Owns CTC (http://www.telefonicactc.cl/) (Compañia de Telefonos de Chile) is the bigger phone operator and Internet service provider (http://www.tie.cl/) in the Country.

In October 2005, it was announced that Telefónica had agreed a £17,7 billion (€ 25,7 billion) deal to buy the British mobile telephone network operator O2 plc.

Ownership

Telefónica is a publicly owned company. It is estimated that a large part of its stock is owned by capital investment funds. Major stockholders include: