Spain

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

The Italian Telephone Co. is obviously rather pleased. It expects the Mammil decree to give impetus to mass telecomputing both professional and consumer, in Italy as well. In addition, the Italian Telephone Co.'s plans for this year call for substantial expansion of Videotel services, with the spread of low-cost terminals, to free subscription and to payment based on normal increases in telephone use.

In this connection, Philips Italy had introduced the "active television set" (a Videotel keyboard costing 100,000 lire that can be connected both to a television set and to a household telephone) for its Christmas sales campaign. The first returns show that Philips enjoyed better-than-expected success (sales of approximately 20,000 telecomputing keyboards had been projected). The Italian Telephone Co. intends to offer business firms just as many of the Videotel Omega 1,000 terminals made by Italtel, at a cost of 1,000 lire per month. A large number of banks also plan to launch their own home banking services this year by way of Videotel. What is taking place, in other words, is an expansion long awaited in the world of telecommunications, one that could trigger the snowball effect (fed by users and new services) needed to bring Italian mass telecomputing out of its current stage reserved for a few pioneers (in mid-1988 there were only 20,000 modem users—as many as there were terminals sold at Christmas).

The Mammi decree may have an ever greater effect from the professional viewpoint. The deregulation of modems will promote a further spread of corporation networks and of mass telecomputing for small businesses and individual professionals. As a matter of fact, the greatest effect is expected precisely in this second segment, which potentially is the larger and livelier. In other words, 1989 could be the year of data transmission.

Telettra 1. Install Phone Lines in Rural USSR

550024254 M. in IL SOLE-24 ORE in Italian

24 Nov 88 p 10—FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

[Article: "After 6 Months of Testing, Moscow Acquiring Telestra Systems"]

[Text] Milan—The experimental multiple-access telephone system for rural telephone service that Telettra a company totally controlled by the Fiat Group, installed

last April in the Russian region of Tula, has successfully passed all technical and operational tests, clearing the way for the Italian company to supply these systems for which negotiations began some time ago through the Italian multinational's Spanish subsidiary (see also IL SOLE-24 ORE of 13 July).

Telettra, as is known, possesses a worldwide leading- edge telephone transmission technology. In fact, to provide telephone service in sparsely populated zones, it uses a microwave system that is much more economical than laying cables.

An agreement is to be signed shortly in Moscow setting forth the final details of the cooperation. The agreement, according to plan, should have an overall value of some 15 billion lire annually.

And this is one of the advantages that enabled the company to bid successfully on the Russian initiative. Telettra's telephone central offices of the analog type are designed for zones with low-density telephone service, where the use of traditional systems would not be competitive. The Telettra system has already been a proven success in Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia. In Spain, the system is operating in Galicia and Asturias.

## SPAIN

Television Satellite Slated for 1992

55001040 Paris AIR & COSMOS in French

15 Oct 88 p 39—FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

[Article by Pierre Langereux: "Spanish TV Satellite for 1992; Four Manufacturers Competing for the Fr2-billion Project"]

[Text] Spain has resumed its satellite project—buried in 1985, it was suddenly revived last summer—so that it would have an operational communications and direct television broadcasting satellite system by 1 July 1992.

Actually, the prime objective of the Spanish authorities is for the system to be ready to operate in time for the Seville World Fair scheduled for March to October 1992, for the Barcelona Olympic Games in July 1992, and for the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, to be celebrated on 12 October 1992.

As a result, on 19 July, the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) invited several European and U.S. satellite manufacturers to submit proposals no later than 15 September. The very day when the INTA was handing over a feasibility study for a Spanish direct-TV satellite to the new minister of PTT [Post and Telecommunications]. Mr Barrionuevo who, meanwhile, seems to have decided to accelerate the project.

The selection of a manufacturer for the Spanish satellites should be completed by the end of October, we were told by Jose M. Carballal, the INTA director of international