Two of the most important initiatives undertaken in recent years by Telefonica de Espana SA, indicative of the national operator’s progress down the information highway, are the development of its ISDN and the so-called Plan Foton, the aim of which is to bring optic fibre cabling to extensive areas of the country. For Spain, 1992 was a key year due to the Barcelona Olympic Games and Expo’92 in Seville, and Telefonica took advantage of these events to complete a series of ISDN pilot tests. Having overcome doubts concerning its viability, Telefonica began to commercialise ISDN services in June 1993, and, by the end of that year, the areas of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, part of the Costa del Sol, Coruna, Asturias, Zaragoza and part of the Basque Country were covered. By the end of 1995, ISDN will be available to every Spanish nucleus with more than 50,000 inhabitants, although Telefonica also pledges it will not forget industrial estates and other special sites outside the cities, wherever there is demand for this type of advanced communication. The Spanish carrier invested $53.6m in infrastructure in 1994, a figure that is predicted to rise to $76.9m in 1995 and $190.8m in 1999. By 1998 it is hoped that all towns of more than 5,000 inhabitants will have access to the ISDN. Meanwhile, the company’s quest to integrate speech, data and high-definition images into a single high-capacity network, with superior levels of confidentiality, security and flexibility of operation, is beginning to take shape, thanks to the Plan Foton, begun in 1993, which aims to extend the network of fibre optic cable across the country, as well as to gradually replace existing coaxial cable. The first clients to benefit from the plan were 500 large business groups, which were al ready users of the company’s private virtual network based on packet switching, the UNO network. By the end of 1995, 98 towns and cities will have been cabled at a cost of $198.3m, and by 1998, 25m inhabitants in 7.3m location units will theoretically be able to gain access to the communication highways and the wide range of potential services, including video-on-demand, extra television channels, teleshopping, learning at a distance and so on. For theory to become practice, the companies offering the advanced services are yet to take shape and client interest is still something of an unknown. Furthermore, the Cable Telecommunications Law, delayed by political infighting, has to be approved, although it is proposed to appoint a second operator to join Telefonica in each region of Spain, which will also be empowered to operate its own cable network.
