Telefónica, S.A. is the world's leading telecom operator in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, where it has more than 100 million customers. With revenues of € 2.203,6 million in 2003, it is Spain's top multinational in market capitalisation and one of the world's biggest telecom companies, and employs over 120.000 persons. The companies in the Telefónica group provide a complete range of communications services which includes fixed telephony, mobile telephony, data transmission and added-value services, business services, internet access, etc.

Telefónica I+D (TID) is a 100% subsidiary of Telefónica S.A. Telefónica I+D was formed in 1988 in order to contribute to the technological innovation of the parent company, by performing research and development activities.

Over the last few years, the line of work of Telefónica I+D has evolved to conform to the objective of becoming a services creation lab.. This objective is driven by the emergence of interactive multimedia services which are increasingly becoming a major force in the telecommunications market. Telefónica I+D employs over 1000 persons, 93% of them hold a University degree, being the most important private company in Spain devoted to R&D.

Telefónica I+D is very active on the following areas where it can also offer a huge knowledge due to the experience obtained in the numerous projects in which Telefónica I+D has been involved, apart from the services deployed in Telefónica:

  • E-services development.
  • Web Semantic.
  • Personal Knowledge management and Intelligent Information Presentation.
  • Personalised information systems based on Semantic Webs.
  • Contextual multimedia services.
  • Content management, content distribution.
  • Collaborative work.
  • Web Services for Collaborative Business.
  • Software technologies, embedded systems and distributed systems.
  • Design and development of intelligent, personalized and seamless services.
  • Intelligent systems and knowledge-based systems and applications.
  • Ambient Intelligence Platform and intelligent user services development.
  • Development of interoperable middleware and intelligent user services for different ambiences.
  • Development of innovative mobile multi-modal applications and services.
  • Distributed interface device management.
  • To design and develop a powerful, context aware and friendly multimodal user interface.
  • Personalization of the service functionalities and user interface of the developed co-operative systems.
  • Customisation of profiles for different users roles: personalization and customization.
  • Technologies for trust and security, smart card and biometric technologies and services related.
  • Context-adaptive interaction.
  • Context-aware adaptation by continuously switching between different communication modes.
  • Context modelling and context adaptivity.
  • Context Sensing.
  • Dynamic configuration of networked software services.
  • Software interoperability for heterogeneous networks.
  • GRIDs and peer-to-peer technologies.
  • P2P platform for Information exchange.
  • Human Computer Interaction.
  • E-health technologies and applications.
  • Wireless computing, wireless multimedia and 3G mobile phones.
  • Network innovation, with the purpose of supporting Telefónica in its effort to offer the widest possible range of services, solutions for the network security and connectivity.

Telefónica I+D bases its work on the use of the most advanced and competitive concepts and media. This requires thorough knowledge of the suitable technical capabilities over a range of basic technologies. The company has in depth expertise in formal methods, object oriented design and programming systems, software engineering tools, real time systems, data bases and knowledge bases, A.I. tool kits, knowledge representation and reasoning, man machine interface, and software tools for network simulation. The company has a computer centre, and special laboratories, such as an optical transmission, Human Factors, or a video services laboratory.

Also, Telefónica I+D has developed an Innovation Plan, with the objective of anticipating solutions to the challenges that the future information society will raise. All the activities in Telefónica I+D are carried out conforming to an in house methodology, supported with tools, which have been awarded an ISO 9001 Certification in 1994.

Telefónica I+D has participated in numerous European projects: eight RACE I, eighteen RACE II, IST, IAP, seven ESPRIT II, four ESPRIT III, and several TEN-IBS, TEN-ISDN, CTS, COST, BRITE, IST, eContent, IAP, Ten-Telecom, EURESCOM, Telefónica I+D continues this work through its participation on the 6th Framework Programme.

Role in the project (Degree):

  • TID will mainly develop mobile wireless communication system and ad-hoc routing networks (high).
  • Present COM2REACT results to Spanish Public Authorities and associated automotive partners, and perform continuous dissemination of the project advances inside the Telefónica Group (medium).


Contact sheet:

Name: Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo S.A.U.

Activity Type: IND

Activity:  IT

Number of employees /Turnover:  1265/194M€

Country:  Spain, Brazil, Mexico

Post address:

  • Parque Tecnológico Walqa

    Edificio Ramón y Cajal

    Carretera Zaragoza 330, Km 566

    22197 Cuarte (Huesca)

Fax number:

  • +34 974 215500

Telephone number:

  • +34 974215500

Contact persons:

Web site: