, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company. It has headquarters as well as a registered office in Madrid, Spain."How to get to Distrito ." It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadband, and subscription television, operating in Europe and the Americas.
Along with its brand, it also trades as Movistar, O2, and Vivo. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. On 15 April 2012, Telefónica shut down TVA and Ajacto, which unified the brand into Vivo.
History
The company was created in Madrid in 1924, as Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España (CTNE), with ITT among its major shareholders. In 1945, the state acquired by law a share of 79.6% of the company, later diluted by a capital increase in 1967.
Until the liberalization of the telecom market in 1997, Telefónica was the only telephone operator in Spain,Garcia Algarra, Javier (2010). "The American influence in Telefónica's public relations strategy during the 20s and 30s", IEEE HISTELCON 2010 where it retained a dominant position. Telefónica is present in 12 countries in Latin America and Europe, as of January 2024.
Ownership Telefónica is a publicly listed company with more than 1.5 million direct shareholders. At the end of 2025 its share capital comprised 5,670,161,554 ordinary shares (one euro each) traded on the Spanish Stock Market (Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, and Valencia) and on those in London, New York, Lima, and Buenos Aires.
Telefónica is a national defence service provider in Spain, where the government has a regulatory role in its M&A, including shareholders.
In September 2023, Saudi Arabia's telecom, STC Group, became Telefónica's largest shareholder, with a 9.9% holding, increasing its stake to €2.1 billion ($US2.23 billion), through shares and convertible financial instruments.Inti Landauro and Jesús Aguado (31 October 2023), Spain's state fund considers taking Telefónica stake after STC move Reuters. Announced in December 2023, the Spanish government subsequently acquired a 10% stake in Telefónica, valued at $2.2 billion, in May 2024, to offset the telecom's Saudi ownership stake, through state holding company SEPI.
Stockholders of 5% or more ownership in the company, as at August 13, 2025, are:
Government of Spain (SEPI): 10% CaixaBank: 9.99% China Unicom: 1.27% STC Group: 9.9% Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA): 5.7%
Operations
Europe Spain
Telefónica is the second largest corporation in Spain, behind the Santander Group.Spanish companies in Fortune Global 500 ranking. 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,Hail, César! The fate of Telefónica under César Alierta mirrors Spain's ups and downs 2 Apr 2016 The Economist and the shutdown plan for the legacy copper network is already in progress.Telefónica will shut down one copper switchboard a day until 2020 7 June 2018 Telefónica
Germany
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.
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 '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 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 's broadband "Speedy", ANATEL ordered 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, announced that the number of Speedy subscribers had exceeded three million people.
Dominican Republic In 2000, acquired a 26.5% stake in Tricom when it purchased part of the shares Motorola had obtained in 1993.DR1. 12 October 2000. Tricom sells 26.5% of its shares to de España
Venezuela In late 2004, 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. is currently rolling out 4G LTE in the country.
United States Based in Miami, Florida, USA, Inc. provides services to U.S.-based multinational companies that have operations in Latin America and Europe. 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 Empresas, Larga Distancia – TLD, International Wholesale Services – TIWS (formerly Emergia) and Atento. 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.
Asia China In 2009, China Unicom agreed to a $1 billion cross-holding with .China Unicom and Enter into a Broad Strategic Alliance and a Mutual Investment Agreement . 7 September 2009. In January 2011, the two partners agreed to a further $500 million tie-up in each other. Following completion in late 2011, 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 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.China Unicom and create IoT network union. 5 March 2018 (retrieved on 6 March 2018)
Former operations Czech Republic
In 2005, 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 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 O2 Czech Republic. In 2011, the company was renamed Czech Republic and in 2013, it was announced that 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.General Presentation August 2017.
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