It was a day like today, exactly 20 years ago, when digital mobile telephony was born in Spain. It happened on July 25, 1995. On that date, the Government authorized Telefónica Móviles to start the GSM service. It did so through the then Ministry of Public Works, Transport and the Environment, headed by the socialist José Borrell. At that time, Felipe González governed, the IBM and Hewlett Packard computers of the time released Windows 95 and they say that there was a heat wave that claimed hundreds of victims in the United States. Álvarez del Manzano was the mayor of Madrid and Pasqual Maragall ruled in Barcelona. That same summer began the football season that was recorded in the history of Atlético de Madrid as the Double.
Much has happened since then, but especially in the technological field. That same 1995 eBay, DVD and MP3 were born, and the most appreciated mobile brands were Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens and Alcatel. The screens were monochrome and the device allowed to store up to a hundred contacts. Among the advanced functions of those terminals, the calculator, the voice mail… and little else stood out. The Movistar card allowed the user’s number to be identified. Short messages (SMS) were free, since it was thought that a communication system constrained to only 140 characters and spaces would have no commercial interest.
The mobile phone of 20 years ago was almost a luxury item. Each month a fixed fee of 4,000 pesetas (24 euros) was paid if the line was used for personal matters. The registration fee for the first SIM card amounted to 3,500 pesetas (21 euros). There were rates for time slots: the normal one cost 45 pesetas per minute (27 euro cents); the reduced one amounted to 31 pesetas (18 euro cents) and the super-reduced one was priced at 18 pesetas (10 euro cents). In all cases, a call set-up cost of 20 pesetas (12 euro cents) had to be included. Traffic was measured in fractions of 30 seconds and the first minute was always considered complete. And all, all the numbers started with 909.
It should be remembered that, at that time, it was allowed to use the device while driving. The batteries of the shoephones of that time barely lasted half an hour of conversation and users took pains to delay their calls until nightfall because it was much cheaper that way.
The most advanced users preferred to use their MensaTel, the one that always alerted with a message like: “call the office urgently”. It also provided up-to-date stock information and the most important news headlines. That radio message enslaved doctors, guards and other liberal professionals, all of them linked night and day to their pagers or beepers. Precisely that service disappeared in Spain only three years ago.
Although the Executive’s authorization for Telefónica to operate on GSM frequencies was granted in July 1995, the most impatient Spaniards had to wait until the return of that summer to be able to contract the long-awaited digital telephony. Until then, nearly 900,000 users boasted of having a MoviLine service phone in their pocket and only 36,768 users made calls with their GSM MoviStar models.
Between the analog and digital services, mobile phone penetration in Spain was around 2.5% of the population, compared to the current 108%. GSM coverage was the great unfinished business of Telefónica, the only mobile telephone operator until the arrival of Airtel and after Amena. Telephone antennas on the 900 Mhz band covered 78% of the population at the end of 1995, compared to 98% of the MoviLine popularized by the cyclist Perico Delgado.
The mobile subsidiary is born
The Telefónica chaired by Cándido Velázauez will remember the beginning of GSM due to the collateral effect that this entailed with the creation of the company Telefónica Servicios Móviles. The parent company, Telefónica de España, contributed assets valued at 127,000 million pesetas (765 million euros) to its subsidiary.
The government authorized the start of the automatic mobile telephony service, in its GSM modality (the one that currently allows mobile voice communication) and did so after analyzing all the documentation presented by Telefónica Móviles. In the opinion of the Executive, the analysis of the report was “essential” to guarantee the conditions of competition and “the strict separation” with respect to the activities that the parent company, Telefónica de España, then provided as a monopoly. The regulations and specifications of the contest required “to reach a minimum coverage that included Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Zaragoza and Bilbao, within a radius of 25 kilometers”.
Once the competition in mobile telephony awoke, with Airtel and Amena in 1998, the average monthly consumption only of mobile was around 14,000 pesetas (84 euros). Currently, the average mobile rate is around 9 euros per month.
Despite the precautions, customers paid more than one euro for a 30-second call. For this reason, most used the mobile to say just what was necessary. “I’ll call you on the cheapest landline,” he said to himself before hanging up. Needless to say, nobody turned on the mobile abroad. That could mean ruin, almost like now. Tango already says it: 20 years is nothing.
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