[Anonymous]

Three items in the Spanish press caught my eye today, not sure if they represent good news or not.

Telephones., Telefonica/Movistar and Vodafone, have brought out their tomahawks in a war of words and offers in the mobile and fixed telephone lines market.

Three days after Vodafone made an announcement in Barcelona offering to cut mobile phone bills by 24%( I have heard this before somewhere but bills never seem to go down)
Telefonica has reacted with its own “Tarifa plana “for mobile to fixed lines for its 22,4 m clients, with contract OR pay as you go.

The price of the new service that was announced yesterday Friday is 15 e
a month. For this amount Movistar clients can call the 12 million homes in Spain that have a fixed line , including the cost of the establishment of the call with a limit of 1,000 mins per month. Once this total is used up the cost of call from mobile to fixed will revert to the tariff a client has already.

This lead to the usual mudslinging and throwing toys out of prams.

Vodafone poured cold water on the scheme saying it was just a rehash of Telefonica´s scheme brought out in May 2007, except now it included “pay as you go” customers and was 3e a month cheaper. They consider Telefonica clients will end up paying more as the average amount spent per month on mobile calls to fixed line is 4e-

Telefonica counterattacked by criticising the Vodafone scheme which starts on Monday 18th February by saying it will fail because it is directed at old people and those on low incomes who will be reluctant to change operator. They consider their competitor( my quotes ha ha If ever there was a monopoly , Telefonica is it.) is going against the agreed policies of companies involved in mobile phones, broadband,tv etc. They end by saying Vodafone will “cannibalise ” its income and lose money by switching people from mobile-fixed line calls.

2) With the general election in Spain only 22 days away the PP (Conservatives) have cut the PSOE (Labour not sure if it is old or new)
lead to 1 1/2 %from over 3% last week. Perhaps Spain´´s economic ills are hitting home in people´s pockets. As someone once said “It´s the economy stupid”

3)Jean Claude Trichet rules out any interest rate cuts in the Eurozone. If only the Governor of the Bank of England had cojones he would stand up to Gordon Broon and not pour more petrol on the raging fire that is debt in the UK, by reducing interest rates..

I know this post has little to do with property in Spain ,but thought it might prove of interest.

My own view on the three items is, mobile phone bills will go up one price cut leads to two price increases somewhere else in the price list. I just hope PP win on March 9th, Mr Cobbler and his lot have done very little good for Spain in their 4 years, at least the economy will be in safer hands with PP. Big fan of M Trichet, even though he does n´t help Spain
by not cutting interest rates.

[mike]

@135yearswaiting wrote:

2) With the general election in Spain only 22 days away the PP (Conservatives) have cut the PSOE (Labour not sure if it is old or new)
lead to 1 1/2 %from over 3% last week. Perhaps Spain´´s economic ills are hitting home in people´s pockets. As someone once said “It´s the economy stupid”

I wouldn’t want to win an election at this particular moment in Spain. In fact, I’d leak some misleading news just to lose it. In 4 years time people will forget that the storm clouds were gathering about now.

[Anonymous]

I disagree that Trichet isn’t being helpful to Spain. Cheap credit was largely responsible for Spain being in the state it is in now -to cut rates now would just add more fuel to the fire and make the inevitable crash much worse.
I don’t admire Jean “Clouseau” Trichet; remember that he was to be the first governor of the ECB until he was waylaid by fraud and corruption charges. Obviously integrity or reputation are of little importance in EC politics otherwise we couldn’t send our shamed ex ministers like Mandelson to join the party.

As for the election -it will be very interesting to see what bad news comes out in the aftermath. Maybe we will finally find out the extent of the Spanish banks losses in their American subprime adventures…

[Author]

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