Yoigo

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Xfera Móviles, S.A.

Type	Private
Founded
Headquarters	Madrid, Spain
Industry	mobile phone operator
Parent	TeliaSonera
Website	www.yoigo.com

Yoigo (short for 'Yo oigo', spanish for 'I hear') is the name of the fourth mobile phone operator with a network of its own in Spain. They operate a UMTS/3G network, which at their launch (dec. 2006) had very limited coverage to some of the biggest cities.

Originally the carrier was named Xfera. After several technology and market problems in 2001, the company was kept in the freezer for several years, as the owners themselves told the press, until December 2003 when the Board of Directors, supported by the shareholders, decided to make an additional investement of €135 million, and open negotiations with Vodafone to allow use of their network where Xfera don't have coverage. Its main shareholders at that time were ACS, Alba and Abertis, all of them Spanish building companies with no previous experience at the mobile communications market, with a minor presence of TeliaSonera, a scandinavian cell phone operator. For legal reasons, the company was obliged to keep some radio stations operative from 2003 on even in spite that marketing operations hadn't yet been launched and thus the company had no actual users; but for the type of license the company had obtained, some use of the allocated radio spectrum, no matter the number of users, was needed for Xfera to retain the license.

Nevertheless, actual operations didn't start until June 2006, when TeliaSonera, a minority holder till then, acquired almost 80pc of Xfera's shares and stated that Xfera would re-start building its UMTS network and start offering mobile services later in 2006. ^[1]

On October 2006, Xfera announced the launch of the commercial service in December under its new brand Yoigo^[2]. The new name was chosen to reflect the simplicity in rates and ease of use of their services. They started with a single type of tariff that made no distinctions between the number you called or the time when you placed the call: 12 cents/minute at any time, any destiny in Spain.

The logo also bears some resemblance to the style of 3's and Vivo's, which also have no single color set, and change colours between uses.

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[edit] References

	Mobile phone companies of Spain
movistar \| Orange \| Vodafone \| Yoigo
Mobile Virtual Network Operators: Euskaltel \| Carrefour Móvil \| Happy Móvil \| Telecor (El Corte Inglés)