Spain delays data venture clearance

Date: 04/04/1996

THE reluctance of the Spanish authorities to move quickly in opening alternative telecommunications infrastructure and the market for data transmission is delaying clearance of its participation in the four-nation Unisource alliance.

Unisource - a joint venture between the Netherlands' KPN, Telia of Sweden, the Swiss PTT and Spain's Telefónica (subject to Commission clearance) - notified the Commission this week of its plans to integrate Telefónica's data business Telematica into the grouping.

This move is likely to add to the difficulties the Commission is experiencing in clearing the venture which, along with 'Atlas', is one of the two big alliances in European telecoms.

Ever since Telefónica's participation in the venture was notified last summer, Van Miert has been using the leverage this gives him to prise open the Spanish data and alternative networks markets.

Van Miert is following the pattern he set when he provisionally cleared Atlas last year, but only after France and Germany pledged to liberalise alternative networks 18 months before they were required to under EU law and agreed to leave their data networks outside the joint venture until 1998. “The two cases are not completely comparable,” Van Miert admitted recently, “but we will insist on the same commitments as we did from Atlas.”

Opening alternative networks is proving difficult for the Spanish authorities. Although a law has been passed allowing cable television firms to offer basic telephone services from 1998, these firms will only offer services in zones alongside Telefónica or alone where it is not present.

The government will rely on the national electricity operator and another major telecoms firm, Retevision, to provide the alternative voice telephony service to Telefónica from 1998 onwards.

On data transmission, British Telecom is in an alliance with Banco Santander using lines leased from Telefónica, and has long complained that the terms of its licence are more onerous than those demanded under EU law.