SPAIN OPENS UP TELECOMMUNICATIONS MARKET TO COMPETITION AT LAST.

Eleven months behind most of the other countries of the European Union, Spain officially opened its domestic telecommunications market to competition on December 1. The reason for the delay was largely that Spain had been granted extra time by the European Commission to adapt a sector that had been under the monopoly hold of Telefonica for 74 years. Telefonica was privatised at the beginning of 1997 and the transition period until the end of November 1998 gave the Government in Madrid a...