5 years ago... Spanish web users go on strike

NEWS 03.09.98: An estimated 1.7 million Spanish web surfers are expected to go on strike today in protest over high call charges for internet access. Instigated by a group of hackers, the move is also backed by Spain's Association of Internet Users, after the country's dominant telco, Telefonica, announced a sharp rise in local call prices. The hike in price is part of what Telefonica refers to as a "rebalancing strategy" since the deregulation of the market, in which the telco needs to make its long-distance prices more competitive. Robert Hall, competition and regulation analyst at Ovum, said: "This shows strong commercial logic. Its local call prices are currently at the lower end of the European scale and it can afford to increase them without being called in by regulation authorities." But for the protesters, a 126 per cent increase is too much, and many sites have changed their home page to say 'web on strike', while others are being urged to leave the telephone off the hook all day and avoid surfing the net. 03.09.03: Collective action to bring about a better deal for consumers is a good thing. But without looking back at the exact figures for this day of novel protest, we feel fairly sure in saying that ultimately it didn't cause much of a stir in the dominant telco's halls of power. High-dial up access fees were an issue for consumers across Europe five years ago. In the UK, surfers were hindered by the lack of unmetered dial-up price plans and minimum call costs - even for checking emails for 30 seconds. But the market quickly moved on. In Spain, Telefonica's love affair with the new - mainly mobile and internet in the form of Telefonica Moviles and Terra - continued. It bought US-based Lycos, back then still one of the search giants, and even Dutch production and new media outfit Endemol, better known to most Britons as the company that brought us Big Brother. And of course after this age of rapid expansion, the departure of charismatic and controversial Telefonica chairman Juan Villalonga, and dial-up-free broadband, this just looks like a quirky, five-year-old story. Trust us - it felt more meaningful at the time.