Telefonica-Barcelona makes enormous investments to welcome world to 1992 Olympiad One of the most pressing questions in Spain at the moment with both the 1992 Single European Market and the Olympic Games just around the corner, is whether Telefonica de Espana SA will be able to cope with the country’s telecommunications requirements. Telefonica-Barcelona’s recent annual report shows that the company has succeeded, in this region, in reducing the waiting list for lines to 36,951 from 1987’s figure of 44,097 and is laboriously improving the service it offers, increasing the rate of installation of lines by 19% while demand went up only 11%. Furthermore, digital connections were up 182%, staff increased by 700, while total investment in Barcelona was $309m, up 53% on 1987. With regard to demand, the most notable increases were for services such as X25 (up 99%), cellular phones (up 141%), and Ibercom (up 282%), while, in actual traffic, international calls increased by 28% and cellular mobile phone calls went up 188%. In response, Telefonica increased the number of X25 ports available by 36%, lines by 34% and fibre optic cable by 172%. Looking to the future, Telefonica-Barcelona’s budget for 1989 comes out at $667m which is 116% up on that for 1988. The Report also mentions Telefonica’s main telecommunications projects. These include the laying of a ring channel around the Olympic Games stadium and village area to enable phone links to be tapped in as required. Optical fibre cables will be installed in the channelling to support delivery of speech, data and video over Telefonica’s network. Secondly, the Olympic Village is to be reconverted into homes after the Games and Telefonica has recently signed a contract of sale with Barcelona’s council for a $1.2m plot in the Village where the telephone company will build its $25.6m Barcelona-92 telephone exchange to deal with telecommunications in the north and north-east of the city both during and after the Games. The building will consist of two sections, one housing 20,000 digital lines, an Iberpac packet switching centre to connect terminals in the Village to the rest of the network, an Ibermic centre for data and image high speed circuit connections and a base station for the mobile phone and and radiopaging services; the other will house the administrative offices and management. Barcelona Teleport The building will also be an international exchange distributing foreign phone traffic from surrounding provinces via optical fibre cable to France, submarine communications (MAT-2 and EMOS cables) to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Israel, and via TAT-9 cable to the UK, the US and Canada; it will also house the international transmission and data maintenance centre. The third Telefonica project is the $252m Telecommunications Tower to support all types of microwave service including Telefonica services, broadcasting of TV and FM services in the metropolitan area, connection of TV production centres to the broadcasting centre, interconnection of the mobile TV radio links and a base station for any type of private radiotelephony. An earth station for all types of international communications via satellite is also planned. It will have several parabolic antennae and an advanced satellite tracking system, enabling telegraphy services, high speed data transfer, videoconferences, faxes and TV signals to be provided via Intelsat and Eutelsat. Other plans include, the Barcelona Teleport consisting of a satellite farm with parabolic antennae for the IBS and SMS services via satellites and an annexe building, complete with all the transmission and radio equipment required for the linking the terrestrial network to the parabolic antennae; a network management centre with service and supplementary buildings; the Telecom Valles Programme for a new telecommunications infrastructure in the Valles area which supports Barcelona’s technological park and various research institutions; and the creation of a new company to produce and distribute Barcelona Cable TV. The city will also be connected by fibre
optic cable to Madrid, Valencia, and France adding to the province’s existing wide area network. Telefonica Barcelona’s future projects also span promotion and development of its viewdata service, and, last but not least, the extension of the basic phone service.
