Telefonica To Invest EUR8 Billion In Development In 2007

SANTANDER, Spain (Dow Jones)- Telefonica plans to invest EUR8 billion in development, infrastructure and new services this year, Julio Linares, Director of Business Development for Telefonica said in a telecommunications conference Monday.

Linares said the investment represented 14% of the company's revenue for 2007.

Telefonica is one of the world's largest telecommunications companies and has operations throughout Europe and Latin America.

Telefonica also said it expects mobile telephone penetration rates in Spain - the number of mobile terminals per person - to reach 130% by 2009. Currently, Spain has slightly more mobiles in use than people, with a mobile penetration rate of roughly 104%.

High speed Internet connections, an area where Spain tends to lag behind its European peers, also is expected to rise significantly in the coming years, Linares said. Last year 31% of Spanish households had a broadband Internet connection, but by 2009 Telefonica expects that 53% of them will have a broadband Internet connection.

The growth in Internet connection speed is also expected to rise, due to the demand for faster connection speeds. Last year, broadband connection speeds were around 10 megabits per second in Spain, and by 2009 Telefonica expects high speed internet to jump fivefold to around 50 megabits per second.

"We are expecting Internet speeds to increase at even a greater rate than the growth over the last three years, technologically it is possible, and we could even beat this estimate," Linares said.

Company Web site: www.telefonica.com

-By Jason Sinclair, Dow Jones Newswires; 34 913958127; jason.sinclair@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

Posted to the site on 3rd September 2007