Local Number Portability - Portability By Country - Europe - Spain

Spain

In Spain, number portability among cell phone carriers is available since October 1, 2000, without any cost to the end user. The technical details for the process are regulated by the CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones or Telecoms Market Commission) and all carriers are obliged to comply with their requirements. As of August 2007, cell number portability must complete in 5 business days (i.e. excluding weekends) from the moment the request is confirmed by the customer, with the actual switch occurring late at night to avoid missing any calls. The user wakes up using a new SIM-card from the new cell provider while keeping the number.

In the mature Spanish cell phone market (as of June 2007, with 107 lines per 100 inhabitants ), portability has been widely used by the competing carriers as a way to steal each other's customers, usually offering them free handsets or extra credit. From June 2006 to June 2007 alone, 3,957,556 cell phone lines switched carriers via this proceeding, about 10% of all cellular lines in use. Spain is the one country in the European Union where more customers have switched cell phone providers, with more than 9 million carrier switches completed as of April 2007.

As for the fixed line market, number portability is also available since year 2000, but weaker competition meant that actual adoption of the fixed number portability process was quite sluggish. As of August 2004, 1,041,246 fixed line switches were completed.

Fixed line market is peculiar in Spain, since only two local loop providers can operate at each particular region (or demarcación as regulated by the CMT): a cable carrier (such as Ono, R and many others) and the former State monopoly (Telefónica). The sole of them operating statewide—Telefónica—is obliged to provide other firms with access to their exchange facilities or rental/transfer of their copper last-mile loops, at fees regulated by the CMT (practice known as local loop unbundling). As cable providers do not have a statewide footprint, many users have no actual chance of applying for "true" fixed number portability, that is, giving up Telefónica's service altogether. Some of them can however get their service from a third company who will bill the service and then pay Telefónica for the copper pair rental and maintenance fees, with the customer receiving a single bill. In the end, as Telefónica set up a reselling program for their fixed lines and DSL internet access, the former monopoly is still much in control of the fixed line market, including profitable broadband access. In fact, Telefónica was fined in excess of €152 million by the European Commission on July 4, 2007 on ground of "impeding competition on the Spanish broadband internet access market for more than five years, and so depriving consumers and business of a choice of broadband suppliers".

Due to the billing scheme used in the Spanish phone call market, where the calling party assumes the full cost of the call, and calling a cellphone is usually more expensive than calling a fixed line, a distinction must be made between cellphone numbers (beginning with "6" or, from October 2011, "71", "72", "73" or "74", ) and fixed numbers (usually beginning with 9 or 8). Full number portability in which a customer transfers a cell to a fixed number or vice versa is thus not possible. See Telephone numbering in Spain for more information.