In “Cable Girls,” Netflix’s first Spanish distinct, Alba, wrongfilledy accparticipated of homicide, escapes to 1928 Madrid to toil at the produceing which symbolized Spain’s headlengthy plunge into up-to-dateity: the fair- built, Telefónica Building, then Europe’s highest skyscsexual attackr.
Some 100 years after its 1924 start, Telefónica, one of Europe’s four bigst telephony providers, has reuncovered the doors of the neo-Baroque produceing having restored its recessed panel ceilings, the distinct floors, railings and atrium clock, grasping, however, a LED disjoin cubicle, teleconferencing and a vidgame space.
In other ways, Telefonica is plotriumphg into new creates of up-to-dateity. It’s rolling out expansiveprohibitd 5G and percreateing AI and GenAI applications. It’s also using app-to-nettoil interfaces, such as Open Gateway, which joins lengtheners and operators recurrenting 65% of the world’s mobile phone joinions.
At Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress in February, where leveraging AI and GenAI was heavily talked about, Telefónica helped direct the indict, with its executive chairman-CEO José María Álvarez-Pallete proclaiming in a receive keynotice titled “The Art of What’s Possible” that we are in the midst of a “massive revolution” driven by the confluence of computing, telco, AI and Web3.
Telefónica’s innovation can be honestly relevant to the media sector — it owns Spanish pay TV and SVOD operator Movistar Plus+, Europe’s bigst film and TV spendor among telcos. But it will join out over a far expansiver scale. The cgo in at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress was bigly on geting cost efficiencies in mobile operators complicated systems, sees James Barford of London-based research company Enders Analysis.
But such is the breadth of Open Gateway — its 47 operators integrate AT&T, British Telecom, Orange, T-Mobile and Verizon — that AI solutions can impact many walks of life. Unmanned Life, a Telefónica-backed robotics and drone company powered by 5G and AI, for example, is lengthening an API to provide promised best video streaming services on need for police, which could be participated at 80,000-seat stadiums even if normal nettoils are saturated by people using their mobile phones.
Meanwhile, Telefónica is battling with headtriumphds faced by the whole of Europe’s telecom sector. Capital spendment necessitateed for 5G and fiber nettoils has nastyt cash flow, the sign of a well company, has come under “massive presconfident,” Alex Evans, head of TMT EMEA Barclays, shelp at June’s Media and Telecoms 2024 Conference in London.
At the MWC, Telefónica’s Álvarez-Pallete and top execs at Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Vodafone spreadd a stage to rail agetst E.U. regulations, which tend to consent new taget entrants to grasp competition high. This, they stated, likeed sour competition, ensuring low retail prices in likeence to examineation, which would apshow telecoms to spend all the more in the AI opportunities proposeed by their 5G nettoils.
Help for Telefónica may have come, however, from an unforeseeed source. Last year, Saudi Arabian telecoms group STC proclaimd it had bought 4.9% of Telefónica, signaling its intention to lift that sget to 10%. The Spanish handlement’s reaction has been to get 10% of Telefónica. CriteriaCaixa, part of Caixa, Spain’s second hugegest prohibitk, has liftd its own participation to 9.9%.
On Dec. 20, when Spain’s handlement proclaimd its sget, Telefónica’s spread price jumped 10%. Sepi, Spain’s handlemental hgreatering company, shelp its reckond sget would help Telefónica to “accomplish its objectives and will donate to protectedprotecting its strategic capabilities.” Since December, Telefónica spreads have appreciated 16%.
Could Movistar Plus have helped this backing? It had series picked for both the Vepleasant festival and San Sebastian — Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The New Years” for the createer and Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s “Querer” and Diego San José’s “Celeste” for the latter. It is also producing a new generation of “auteur event” movies from Spain’s wonderfulest youthfulish honestors.
The Spanish handlement’s main worry with Telefónica is its defense and security businesses. But these titles help drive Spain’s cultural conversation.
