President of Telefónica Spain
New technological developments, hyper-connectivity and globalisation are posing important challenges and opportunities to our economy. We are already in the fourth industrial revolution and at Telefónica we would like to contribute to this process with the perspective and knowledge acquired by being the leading operator of connectivity services and digital solutions in Spain. A country which is leading the deployment of fibre in Europe, placing us in an enviable position for the future 5G deployment.
Therefore, we are firmly committed to Connected Industry 4.0. Because we believe that if Spain behaves decisively and from all points of view in promoting digitalization, we will have a unique opportunity to grow, generating employment and reposition ourselves as leaders on the world stage. But to achieve this goal, it is necessary that all those responsible for these issues, including us, design and execute a “digitalisation plan” with 5 basic pillars:
- The development and adoption of digital services.
- The promotion of digital education.
- The commitment to entrepreneurship and innovation.
- Ensure ‘digital trust’ based on security, privacy and transparency of customer data.
The most relevant aspect of all of the above is connectivity, since the rest of the premises are based on this.
The development of infrastructures based on new generation networks is key to supporting the exponential increase of data traffic expected. In Europe, Spain is leading the deployment of next generation networks. And this has been achieved largely thanks to the company’s investment commitment, and strong investments in fibre and LTE. A difficult decision that was taken a few years ago, in the middle of a recession period. Thanks to this continued investment, Telefónica is the company with the greatest penetration of broadband and the greatest number of customers who have fibre to the home. We have more users than France, Italy, Germany and United Kingdom combined. And we have fulfilled this, despite these countries have more population and more income per capita than Spain.
In the future, we want to keep growing and evolving the fixed and mobile networks to ensure good connectivity and contribute as well to avoiding the so-called digital divide.
The development and adoption of digital services is key. At Telefónica, we want to bring technology to the homes and make life easier for people. For this reason, we were the first to launch ‘Fusión’, an integrated offer of communications, connectivity and entertainment.
We are also promoting the television market in Spain, incorporating exclusive content into the audiovisual offer and a functionality that provides a differential user experience. This bet is making a market that was stagnating grow. In addition, we have opted to bring technology closer to companies, becoming the main partner of the Large Companies and Administrations, while we are encouraging SMEs to get on the digitalization train and bring them closer to the cloud so that improve their productivity and competitiveness.
In terms of digital education, we want to promote its implementation as a starting point to contribute to equal opportunities, promoting talent and the use of new digital professions in Spain. We are committed to the transformation of the education system to bring technology to all stages of learning from school to in-company training.
It is essential to encourage entrepreneurship. At Telefónica we support entrepreneurs and we are also committed to open innovation as the engine of employment and the creation of companies.
To do this, we are promoting internal and external technological I+D ecosystems through tools such as Wayra hubs.
And, finally, we must take ‘Digital Trust’ into account, that is why security, privacy and transparency of data will be increasingly important. Although we began to be familiar with concepts like cybersecurity and we have seen the impact on the reputation of incumbent companies and governments in this area, public-private coordination and collaboration to ensure the proper functioning of infrastructure and critical services will be increasingly relevant.
As you can see, we have a very exciting future ahead of us and a great opportunity to transform our business, our society and our values. But to make it a success, we must do it together.
