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Activities
Ferrovial maintains a presence in the telecommunications market through its 10% stake in
ONO, Spain's leading integrated broadband operator.
Group strategy is to consolidate and realise the value of its investments. In this context,
Ferrovial sold its 7.6% stake in the Spanish fixed telephony operator, Uni2, to France Telecom
(Uni2’s majority shareholder) in 2001.
ONO
ONO provides integrated telephone, television and internet services to residential and
corporate customers in the regions of Valencia, Alicante, Castellón, Murcia, Albacete, Huelva,
Cádiz, Mallorca and Cantabria, a potential market of 4 million households and 300,000
companies. ONO offers the corporate market advanced communications services and
applications through its own nationwide network.
ONO became operational in 1998. In just three years, with total investments of more than
€1.2 billion, it has notched up over 338,000 residential clients and 4,800 businesses with direct
access.
Moreover, ONO was the first telecommunications operator to offer high speed internet
access.
The ONO network is one of the largest high-speed communications infrastructures in Spain;
it closed financial year 2001 with more than 4,700 km of local network and about 5,500 km
of backbone. Expansion of the infrastructure has meant that ONO now covers 67 cities in
Spain with 1,100,000 homes passed (i.e. ready to receive the group’s communications
services).
In 2001, ONO reinforced strategy in the corporate market through the acquisition of Telia
Iberia, a provider of IP-based value added data services.
During the year, ONO obtained a financing package worth €1.1 billion which funds the entire
business plan. The deal consisted of a syndicated preferential and secured loan amounting to
€800 million. Additionally, ONO shareholders have undertaken to carry out a capital increase
of €300 million, in direct proportion to their respective holdings, in first quarter 2002. ONO
will use this financing, which totally covers its long-term requirements, to complete expansion
of its integrated cable services in Spain.
Telecommunications
