Retevisión was a former

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

telecommunications company; of which a portion of it continues to exist as

Cellnex Telecom Cellnex Telecom is a Spanish wireless telecommunications infrastructure and services company with up to 53,000 sites throughout Europe. Its activity is divided into four main areas: services for telecommunications infrastructures; audiovisual br ...

, which was spun off from

Abertis Abertis Infraestructuras, S.A. () is a Spanish worldwide corporation engaged in toll road management. Even though most of the toll roads it operates in Spain are in Catalonia, the company is headquartered in Madrid. The company runs over 8,600 k ...

in 2015.

History

Retevisión was founded in 1989 as a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( l ...

, a division of the national public broadcaster

Radiotelevisión Española The Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, S.A. (; ), known as Radiotelevisión Española or RTVE, is the state-owned public corporation that assumed in 2007 the indirect management of the Spanish public radio and television service kno ...

(RTVE). Its original mission was to provide transmission facilities for television and radio signals throughout Spain. In 1996, the First Aznar government of the People's Party decided to liberalise the Spanish telecommunications market, and a license was granted to Retevisión. In 1997, it was decided to move the company headquarters from

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), an ...

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ...

. That same year Retevisión was acquired by

Telecom Italia Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fix ...

and the Spanish electricity utilities

Endesa Endesa, S.A. (, originally an initialism for ''Empresa Nacional de Electricidad, S.A''.) is a Spanish multinational electric utility company, the largest in the country. The firm, a majority-owned subsidiary of the Italian utility company Enel, ...

and

Union Fenosa Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

. The company was operating without its own landline network, and users of

Telefónica Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is List of telephone operating companies, one of the largest telephone operators and List of mobile network ...

that were Retevision subscribers needed to prepend the prefix 050, which was later replaced by 1050, to the number in order to route calls to Retevisión. At first, customers could only call other provinces with Retevisión. With the liberalisation of the

local loop In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the comm ...

in September 1998, Retevisión customers could make local calls. That same year, Retevisión bought two pioneering Spanish

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privatel ...

s Servicom and RedesTB, and launched their own ISP under the brand iddeo. In June 1998 the company obtained Spain's third license for

mobile telephony Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the ...

(after

Movistar Movistar () is a major telecommunications provider owned by Telefónica, operating in Spain and Hispanic American countries. It is the largest provider of landline, broadband, Mobile telephony, mobile services, and pay television (Movistar+) in ...

and Airtel Móviles), and began operations in 1999 under the brand name Amena through its subsidiary Retevisión Móvil. Throughout 1999 it also launched data services over IP for enterprises (

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

networking sites), and direct voice and data by radio link, although the latter services had little success. In Summer 2000, iddeo launched

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

services for businesses. In the Basque Country,

Euskaltel Euskaltel, S.A. is a Spanish telecommunications company based in Derio, Basque Country. It was formed in 1995 in a joint effort by the Basque Government and several Basque saving banks. Its name is literally translated in English as "Basque-Tel ...

from its launch in 1995 retained its distribution exclusivity versus Retevisión therefore fixed telephony and the transmission of radio and television signals was performed by Euskaltel. The brand Retevisión as a telephony operator was abandoned in 2002 in favour of the new name Auna, a merger between Retevisión and the cable operator AunaCable (both companies being part of

Grupo Auna Grupo Auna was a telecommunications company that emerged from the former Retevisión, which was one of the two companies that were created in Spain in 1996 after the liberalization of telecommunications. The group was divided into two parts in 2005 ...

). In 2005, the cable television, fixed telephony and ISP portions of Auna were absorbed by the operator

ONO ONO, Ono or Ōno may refer to: Places Fiji * Ono Island (Fiji) Israel * Kiryat Ono * Ono, Benjamin, ancient site Italy * Ono San Pietro Ivory Coast * Ono, Ivory Coast, a village in Comoé District Japan * Ōno Castle, Fukuoka * ...

. In 2006,

France Télécom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

acquired the mobile telephony operations of Amena, which led to the creation of

Orange España Orange Espagne S.A.U., more commonly known by its trade name of Orange España, is a mobile network operator in Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_m ...

on 1 August that same year. Retevisión's remaining audiovisual-related portfolio was then sold by Grupo Auna to Abertis in 2003, which subsequently spun off that particular business into a new company called Cellnex Telecom in 2015.

References

External links

Website

Amena

ONO

Abertis Telecom
1989 establishments in Spain Cable television companies of Spain Telecommunications companies of Spain Telecommunications companies established in 1989 2002 mergers and acquisitions 2005 mergers and acquisitions 2006 mergers and acquisitions 2014 mergers and acquisitions {{Spain-company-stub