José María Álvarez-Pallete, a chairman of the house

Telefónica has had a new chairman since April, José María Álvarez-Pallete, a veteran of the company, CEO until then and with a long track record in both Europe and Latin America to face the new challenges of the digital revolution. Álvarez-Pallete, born in Madrid, an economist and deeply interested in technology and humanism, will become the "Chairman of the Centenary" and also a reference for the industry in Spain and Europe for his defence of a fair regulatory framework in line with the current market situation.

Spain, the fastest country to have ultrafast broadband

2016 is already a big year for fibre in Spain. This is something the Telefónica chairman is proud of and often emphasises: "There is more fibre in Spain than in the UK, Italy, Germany and France combined". Coverage and homes with this technology has continued to increase month after month this year, and Movistar in November surpassed the number of fibre optic customers compared to ADSL customers. Some 63% of Spanish households already had access to ultrafast broadband, making Spain the fastest country to roll out a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in Europe. The right competitive and regulatory conditions and the investment capacity of companies, including Telefónica at the forefront, make this possible. Optical fibre has many advantages over copper, including the ability to transmit more data, faster and over longer distances without signal loss, which is especially important for television.

ProFuturo and the dreams of millions of children

September 2016 saw the launch of ProFuturo, a digital education programme to bridge the global education gap. Our foundation, together with the "la Caixa" Foundation, join forces with one goal: to provide children with the digital education experiences and resources they need to fulfil their dreams. ProFuturo has been growing ever since. The programme that started in Latin America reached Africa that same year; in 2017 we jumped to Asia and in 2019 we reached schools in the Caribbean. We are now in 45 countries, have trained more than 1.4 million teachers and are helping to improve the education of 28 million children. With the certainty that education is the most powerful tool to change the world, in the coming years ProFuturo will continue to travel miles and add schools so that no child is left behind.

Telxius: our infrastructures in value

In 2016, Telxius is created, a new Group company with the aim of grouping together and adding value to Telefónica's various infrastructure assets: 16.000 telecommunications towers in Germany, Spain, Brazil, Peru and Chile and 65,000 km of submarine cable. Today it is one of the world's leading digital telecommunications infrastructure operators and has continued to expand its global ecosystem. It has one of the largest and most promising cable networks in the world: 94.000 kilometres of high-capacity submarine fibre optic cables. It also provides direct internet connectivity with a coverage of 93 points of presence and 27 docking stations in 23 countries, among other infrastructures. Following the purchase of 40% from KKR in January 2023, Telefónica holds a 70% stake and the Pontegadea group 30%, through the company Pontel.

LUCA, a commitment to Big Data

In October 2016 we introduce LUCA, the new Big Data services unit to help our corporate clients understand and extract the greatest possible value from the transparent and responsible use of data. LUCA's objective is to accompany all types of organisations on the path of transformation and to benefit from the strength of Big Data, always with the fundamental premise of maintaining privacy, security and transparent use. We offer three areas of services: • Smart Steps. We provide customers with anonymised and aggregated data from Telefónica's networks. A valuable example would be to the organisation of transport in a city • The analytics and external consultancy services, which are already offered by Synergic Partners (company incorporated in 2015) • BDaaS (Big Data as a Service). We help our customers to manage and get the most out of their data, using our infrastructure in the cloud.

We open the ‘Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar’

On 19 October 2016 we find ourselves in Manacor among great tennis stars, Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer and the first students of a great sporting and educational project. We celebrate the official opening of the 'Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar', a residential complex that offers students (between 11 and 18 years old), the combination of academic training at the American International School of Mallorca while they train to become professional tennis players. A campus of high technology applied to sport, with the best facilities. The new centre of our ambassador, Rafa Nadal, had opened a few months earlier with the "Summer Camp" and as of September it ran its first annual programme with great success.

Digital Symphony with tenor Juan Diego Flórez

With the Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Flórez, and our new ambassador, Telefónica is embarking on a beautiful project "Sinfonía Digital": a combination of music and technology to promote education and social inclusion for children and young people in vulnerable situations. Within the framework of this creative and innovative initiative, a benefit concert commemorating 20 years of the tenor's career will take place. On 4 October 2016, the Teatro Real in Madrid, with the support of Telefónica, will experience a unique and magical moment when the children of the Orquesta Pre-Juvenil "Symphony for Peru" from the Telefónica auditorium in Lima, joined Juan Diego Flórez in real time.