BT Launches Mobile Services in Spain

BT has thrown its hat into the mobile ring in Spain and launched a new MVNO service aimed at business customers. The British operators says it will offer converged voice and data services as well as unified fixed-mobile communications, with handsets from HTC, Nokia and Samsung. The UK company is following in the footsteps of Dutch operator KPN, which launched an MVNO in Spain last year.

BT said in a statement that it will target mainly business and public sector customers. The company plans to offer them "value-added mobility services" including mobile video-telephony, audio/video streaming services, location based services and fixed-mobile convergence services.

The Spanish business daily, Cinco Dias, reported earlier that BT has a potential market of around one million mobile customers. The company will, initially at least, concentrate on supplying its existing Spanish fixed line customer base of 30,000 small-and-medium-sized businesses and 2,000 large companies and institutions.

In April of last year, the UK operator announced that it would also launch an MVNO aimed at business customers in Italy and signed a deal to use Vodafone's network in Italy. In what the pair describe as a "long-term deal", BT Italia plans to be the first mobile operator in Italy to solely target business customers. Vodafone said that it will make available its network infrastructure and will guarantee a wide portfolio of wholesale mobile services, from voice to SMS and from roaming to data traffic, on which BT Italia will be able to base its own offer of integrated fixed and mobile services to clients.