Removing regulation would align Spain with an increasing number of EU countries and follow similar interventions in other wholesale telecoms markets
The retail fixed-line telephony market has witnessed both declining call volumes and average revenues per line
On 11 May 2025, the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) issued proposals to deregulate the wholesale fixed call termination market in Spain. The fixed termination service allows customers of one operator (landline or mobile) to call landline customers of other operators. As part of this process, the operator making the call pays a termination fee to the landline operator receiving the call. According to the regulator, since all fixed-line telephone operators make calls to other operators and receive calls from them, they are both providers of termination services and customers of their competitors. The CNMC states that in the retail market for fixed-line telephony (which was deregulated in 2008), call volumes and average revenues per line have declined steadily over recent years. At the end of 2024, fixed accounted for just 7.4% of total voice traffic, with Telefónica and MASORANGE together representing 70% of that figure.
Despite operators having a monopoly in fixed call termination, the CNMC sees no risk of anti-competitive behaviour
The CNMC’s analysis also focuses on market developments at the wholesale level, finding that although each operator acts as a monopolist in respect of fixed call termination on its network, there is no risk of excessive prices being set. The regulator states that this is due to the EC’s Delegated Regulation, which establishes a maximum EU-wide fixed termination rate of €0.0007 (£0.0006) per minute. The analysis also does not consider it likely that operators will engage in other anti-competitive practices, including denial of access or discriminatory conditions. In the hypothetical case that this were to occur, the CNMC believes that it could respond through regulatory tools such as dispute resolution or the imposition of symmetric obligations. Based on these considerations, the CNMC proposes to deregulate the market and to lift obligations currently imposed within six months of the approval of its final decision. The consultation on this market – known formally as wholesale call termination on individual public telephone networks provided at a fixed location– will remain open for a non-extendable period of one month.
Market developments enable deregulation of wholesale broadband and fixed call origination, although PIA rules will remain
The regulator’s move to deregulate former Market 1 of the EC’s 2014 Recommendation on electronic communications markets susceptible to ex-ante regulation would bring Spain in line with many of its European peers, including Austria, Denmark, France and Ireland. It would also follow the CNMC’s recent deregulation of wholesale access and call origination on fixed networks (former Market 2), which concluded that the market tends towards effective competition and is no longer characterised by high barriers to entry, and that the application of sectoral regulation and competition law are sufficient to guarantee that this remains the case in future. In the same spirit, in December 2024, the CNMC published draft measures to fully deregulate wholesale broadband access, citing Spain’s extensive fibre coverage, Telefónica’s declining market share and the entry of new players and business models. It did, however, propose to maintain rules around access to Telefónica’s physical infrastructure, stating that this market remains crucial for the deployment of fibre networks by alternative operators.
