Spain

[ES] Telecommunications Market Commission Exempts Vodafone from Funding RTVE

IRIS 2013-4:1/12

Trinidad García Leiva

Universidad Carlos III, Madrid

Since the funding of the national public service broadcaster, RTVE Corporation, was reformed in August 2009, advertising was eliminated as a source of income and a new tax was imposed on national commercial television companies as well as on national telecommunications operators offering audiovisual services (see IRIS 2010-1/18). The tax to be paid annually by the latter is to amount to 0.9% of their gross operating income, corresponding to their yearly turnover.

The telecommunications company Vodafone España S.A.U. announced in 2012 that before January 2013 it would cease to offer television services to its ADSL clients and mobile users. Therefore the operator asked the Spanish telecommunications regulator, the Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones (Telecommunications Market Commission - CMT), to be exempted from paying the tax through which they had been contributing to the funding of RTVE.

Once the CMT checked that Vodafone was no longer providing audiovisual services and therefore subject to the payment of the tax, it agreed during its meeting of 14 February 2013 that Vodafone would be exempted from funding RTVE.