Telefónica is the second largest corporation in Spain, behind the Santander Group. It operates under the Movistar and O2 brands with the first being the largest broadband and phone (both mobile and landlines) provider in Spain.
Telefónica's FTTH network in Spain is the most extensive fibre-to-home network in Europe, as of April 2016, and the shutdown plan for the legacy copper network is already in progress.
Telefónica is the parent of Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG, which held two alternative IP carriers. The two ISPs, mediaWays and HighwayOne merged in January 2003 after having been purchased by Telefónica in 2001 and February 2002 respectively.
On 26 January 2006, Telefónica completed its £17.7 billion (€25.7 billion) acquisition of the UK-based operator O2 which also provided mobile phone services in Germany under the O2 brand. Following the purchase, Telefónica merged Telefónica Deutschland and O2 Germany to form the current business Telefónica Germany.
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Telefónica Germany, purchased competitor E-Plus on 1 October 2014. As part of the purchase, Telefónica reduced its stake in its subsidiary to 62.1%. Integration continues as of August 2015, but the now merged network is Germany's largest in customers.
United Kingdom
On 31 October 2005, O2 agreed to be taken over by Telefónica, with a cash offer of £17.7 billion, or £2 per share. According to the merger announcement, O2, which provided mobile phone services in the UK, Ireland, Germany and the Isle of Man (uniquely to the O2 group Manx Telecom also offered fixed-line services), retained its name and continued to be based in the United Kingdom, keeping both the brand and the management team. The merger became unconditional on 23 January 2006 and O2 became a wholly owned subsidiary of Telefónica. Manx Telecom was sold by Telefónica Europe in June 2010.
In January 2015, Li Ka-shing entered into talks with Telefónica to buy O2 for around £10.25 billion, aiming to merge it with his subsidiary Three. The acquisition was officially blocked by the European Commission on 11 May 2016, which argued that the merger would reduce consumer choice and lead to a higher cost of services Telefónica began to seek a stock market flotation of the business instead.
Announced on 7 May 2020, Liberty Global owner of Virgin Media and Telefónica owner of O2, agreed to merge their U.K. businesses in a deal worth £31bn and form one of the UK's largest entertainment and telecommunication companies to rival the BT Group. As of the 1 June 2021, Virgin Media and O2 UK Ltd officially merged to form Virgin Media O2, giving Telefónica a 50% stake in the new company, with the other 50% owned by Liberty Global.
Austria
In May 2022, Telefónica announced the acquisition of the European cloud-based services specialist and cloud Microsoft Dynamics partner BE-terna. The deal, worth €350 million, included 1,000 staff, AI, extended service capabilities across Europe, and a cybersecurity services division. The deal aimed to see Telefónica increase its geographic scale and aid its digital capabilities.
France
In France, since 2011, Telefónica has a joint venture with the French telecommunications company Bouygues Telecom, part of the Bouygues group, to offer global telecommunication services packages to multinational companies. This cooperation was expanded in June 2015 through the creation of a separate joint venture company named Telefónica Global Solutions France, with its own marketing and sales teams offering Telefónica and Bouygues Telecom services packages to corporations.
Americas
Telefónica operates the Movistar mobile phone brand throughout Latin America and the Vivo in Brazil. In Mexico it occupies a distant second place and it is the largest in Chile, Venezuela, and Brazil. Since 2019, Telefónica has divested the majority of its Latin American business in order to focus on the core markets Spain, Germany, UK and Brazil and add up to €2 billion in revenue with this programme.
Brazil
Telefónica's largest fixed-line operation in South America is in Brazil, where it provides broadband, local and long-distance telephone services in the aforementioned state, which alone represents the highest GDP of South America. It also owns a majority stake in the Brazilian mobile operator Vivo, having agreed on 28 July 2010 to buy Portugal Telecom's stake in the firm for €7.5 billion, after increasing its original offer by €1.8 billion over three months of incident-rich negotiations. The Telefónica group has been in the country since 1996 when it acquired CRT, a fixed-line and mobile operator in the southern part of the country. The landline division is currently part of Oi. In July 1998, acquired Telesp, the telephony operator of the Telebrás system in the state of São Paulo, forming Telefônica Brasil.
In June 2009, after four big "blackouts" on Telefónica's broadband "Speedy", ANATEL ordered Telefónica to stop sales of its broadband service until improvements were made on the infrastructure to provide better-quality service. After the release of sales of broadband internet in August 2009, ANATEL expects the company's service investments to keep on par with the sales. On 24 July 2010, Telefónica announced that the number of Speedy subscribers had exceeded three million people.
Dominican Republic
In 2000, Telefónica acquired a 26.5% stake in Tricom when it purchased part of the shares Motorola had obtained in 1993.
Venezuela
In late 2004, Telefónica took over the operations of Telcel Bellsouth in Venezuela, the first and largest mobile operator in the South American country at the time. After re-branding as Movistar, its CDMA2000 EvDO was progressively replaced by a GSM UMTS 3G network. Telefónica is currently rolling out 4G LTE in the country.
United States
Based in Miami, Florida, Telefónica USA, Inc. provides services to U.S.-based multinational companies that have operations in Latin America and Europe. Telefónica USA also operates the KeyCenter, a data center in Miami built to withstand category 5 hurricanes, from where the company supports Business Continuity and IT services for Enterprise customers in South Florida.
Puerto Rico
In Puerto Rico, Telefónica has presence through Telefónica Empresas, Telefónica Larga Distancia – TLD, Telefónica International Wholesale Services – TIWS (formerly Emergia) and Atento. Telefónica Moviles, through its Movistar brand, had presence in Puerto Rico until mid-2007 but it sold the Puerto Rico network to a private equity group who renamed it Open Mobile.
China
In 2009, China Unicom agreed to a $1 billion cross-holding with Telefónica. In January 2011, the two partners agreed to a further $500 million tie-up in each other. Following completion in late 2011, Telefónica will hold a 9.7% stake in China Unicom, and China Unicom will own 1.4% of the Spanish firm.
In 2018, China Unicom and Telefónica establish a new partnership to combine their services and networks in the internet of things, so as to enable its clients to deploy IoT products and services in China, Europe and Latin America with a single global IoT SIM card.
Former operations
Czech Republic
In 2005, Telefónica bought Český Telecom (Czech Telecom), the former state-owned Czech phone operator which still dominates the Czech fixed-line market. As part of this deal Telefónica also gained its 100% subsidiary Eurotel, one of three mobile phone operators in the Czech Republic. Starting 1 July 2006, both companies were merged into one legal entity and renamed Telefónica O2 Czech Republic. In 2011, the company was renamed Telefónica Czech Republic and in 2013, it was announced that Telefónica would sell its stake in the company to PPF. Under the terms of the sale, the company was allowed to continue to trade under the O2 brand for a maximum of four years. In August 2017, the brand license agreement was extended to 2022, with a 5-year extension to 2027 available.
Slovakia
During 2006, Telefónica won the tender to become the third mobile phone operator in Slovakia, under the O2 brand. It began providing services on 2 February 2007 under the name Telefónica O2 Slovakia, s.r.o. It initially launched providing only a prepaid service but in mid-2007 began to sell contract phones. The company was sold along with Telefónica Czech Republic to PPF.
Ireland
O2 in Ireland was purchased by Telefónica as part of its acquisition of O2 plc in the UK in 2005. Telefónica Ireland has become the second largest mobile phone operator in Ireland, operating a GSM/EDGE and high-speed HSPA+ wireless broadband network to residential and business customers through its "O2" brand. Telefónica Ireland also provide fixed broadband to business customers.
It was announced on 24 June 2013 that Telefónica had agreed to sell its O2 Ireland mobile business for at least €780 million ($1 billion) in cash to Hutchison Whampoa's subsidiary 3. O2 was merged into Hutchison Whampoa's subsidiary Three Ireland in March 2015.
Italy
Telefónica currently owns 46% of Telco, the holding company that controls 22% of Telecom Italia, Italy's former government–owned telephone company. In late 2003, Telefónica announced its intention to acquire the entirety of Telco by January 2014, potentially becoming Telecom Italia's largest shareholder. The plan, was however challenged by the Brazilian competition authority since Telefónica and Telecom Italia, with Vivo and TIM Brasil respectively, are the two largest telephone companies competing in Brazil. Subsequently, Telefónica confirmed in September 2014 that it intended to sell its shares in Telecom Italia following the purchase of Global Village Telecom (GVT) in Brazil from Vivendi. Telefónica sold its shares in the business to Vivendi as part of the sale of GVT in June 2015.
Central and South America
After acquiring 100% of Paysandú S.A., Telefónica started its operations in Guatemala 1998 as Telefónica Movistar and just Telefónica for landlines. In 2004, acquired 100% of BellSouth Guatemala, relaunching mobile operations as Movistar in 2005, with mobile services based on CDMA technology, in 2004 as Telefónica Movistar launch national service with GSM/GPRS technology, and CDMA 1x EV-DO for data. Telefónica Móviles Guatemala (renamed in 2005) offered services on UMTS/HSPA starting in June 2009, and it was the last operator to launch commercial services on this technology, with coverage in all major cities in Guatemala.
On 24 January 2019, América Móvil announced the that it would acquire both the Guatemalan and El Salvadoran operations of Telefónica for US$333 million and $315 million, respectively. The transaction would also acquire all Pay TV operations. The sale was eventually approved in Guatemala and would later become intergraded into Claro. However, the transaction for the El Salvadoran operations to be sold to América Móvil were scrapped due to regulatory hurdles.
Telefónica had purchased the Panamanian, Ecuadorian and Guatemalan operations of BellSouth in 2004 for US$1665 Million, followed by a rebranding to Movistar in 2005. The purchase was intended to help Telefónica focus on its largest markets, alleviating its debt. In February 2019, Millicom announced the purchase of the Panamanian, Costa Rican and Nicaraguan operations of Telefónica for US$1,650 Million, with plans to phase out the Movistar brand from those markets within a year after purchase. The transaction was completed in August the same year. The Costa Rican business, however, was not part of the final Telefónica-Millicom-deal. The Guatemalian and El Salvadorian business was sold to America Movil in 2019 for $315m.
Costa Rica
Telefónica signed a contract for 15 years (extendable for 10 additional years) on 12 May 2011 with the government of Costa Rica. It started operations in 2011 under its Movistar branding. Telefónica sold its Costa Rican business to Liberty Latin America for €425m in 2020.
Colombia
In March 2025, Telefónica sold its majority stake in Colombian telecom Coltel to Millicom.
Uruguay
In May 2025, Millicom also acquired Telefónica's mobile business in Uruguay for $440 million.
Argentina
Telefónica owned Telefónica de Argentina, the largest fixed-line operator in Argentina during 1990-2025, providing broadband, local and long-distance telephone services in the southern part of the country, as well as the Greater Buenos Aires area. The mobile business was then operated by Telefónica Móviles through Movistar, a local subsidiary. In January 2025 Telefónica had hired investment bank JPMorgan to evaluate a possible sale of its Argentina holdings. The operation was sold to Telecom Argentina for $US1.5 billion in 2025.
Peru
Subsidiary Telefónica del Peru was the largest telecom provider in Peru from 1994, providing local, long-distance, and broadband services nationwide. Its mobile telephone business operated under the Movistar brand, from January 2011 on, and competed with major provider Claro. Its main offices were located in Santa Beatriz. The company filed for bankruptcy protection for its Peruvian business, then agreed to sell the unit, in February 2025, to domestic telecom Integra Tec International, for €900k (US$1.02 million).
Ecuador
After acquiring 100% of OTECEL S.A. (Bellsouth), Telefónica Móviles Ecuador started its operations on 14 October 2004 as Movistar. It is one of only three mobile operators in Ecuador. Telefónica in Ecuador has started offering 3G service from the second half of 2009. Telefónica sold its Ecuador business to Millicom for $380m in 2025.
Panama
Telefónica started its operations in Panama in 2004 as Telefónica acquired 100% of Bellsouth Panama. Since then, it has operated using the name Movistar for mobile services. It migrated from CDMA technology used by Bellsouth to GSM 850. It also offers 3G using UMTS 850 and UMTS 1900. In 2015, it launched LTE with coverage expanding in Panama City, Arraijan, Chorrera up to Buenaventura Beach. Telefónica sold its Panama business to Millicom for €536 in 2025.
Colombia
On 18 April 2006, Telefónica's president Cesar Alierta signed an agreement with the Colombian government to buy 50% and one share of the state-owned communications company, Colombia Telecomunicaciones (TELECOM). With this sale, Telefónica became the largest Colombian land-line operator, and also gained an important presence in the local, long-distance and broadband market. The mobile business was run by Telefónica Móviles through the brand Movistar. Telefónica announced the sale of its Colombia business to Millicom for $214m in early 2026.
Chile
Telefónica owns Telefónica Chile, formerly CTC (Compañía de Telecomunicaciones de Chile, formerly known as Compañía de Teléfonos de Chile) which is the biggest fixed-line operator and internet service provider in the country. The Telefónica Group has been in the country since 1989. The mobile business is run by Telefónica Móviles through a local subsidiary. On 26 October 2009, Telefónica Chile changed its name to Movistar, including cellphone, landline, satellite TV, and internet. Telefónica announced the sale of its Chilean business to Millicom and NJJ Holdings for up to €1.156 billion in early 2026.
Positions on network neutrality
In February 2010, Telefónica CEO Cesar Alierta expressed in a meeting at Bilbao, Spain that his company intends to charge Google and other search engines for the use of its network. Alierta complained that such search engines were benefiting from the platform without contributing to the company's expenses and that such a trend will change in the near future. Additionally, he said that Telefónica will seek to push its own content.
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