18. How has competition been with Telefónica?
We are the two competitors. We are competitors in other countries. I believe it is in Venezuela and Panama where we are not present, we are in another country in which perhaps Telefónica is not, but basically we are both in the same places.
Competition has been open in some places, and in most of them we started after Telefónica.
Then, we are competing in the Latin America market and as far as I know, we do not fight too much there; I do not understand why we do in Mexico. For example, they had 72 per cent of the Peruvian market and we came in with approximately twenty percent. In another place they have fifty some percent, in Argentina also fifty some per cent. Then in some countries Telefónica has more and in others less.
What I do say is that there is close competition, it is tight and, well you do not like it when the other one wins in a month or in a year, when you lose …, but then you have to get back somehow, and this is what competition is all about. Of course, there is also competition in statements and before the courts, but basically we feel competition for the markets is more interesting.
In how many? We are competing in 15 countries; it will be competition with a tie, without a tie. They did not allow us to come into Spain. It was interesting there because Telefónica started to advertise it was the leader in Latin America, then in the quarterly reports it saw this was no longer so, and now we are ahead of them with 30 million customers … 30 million when they were the leaders.
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