R Cable y Telecomunicaciones Galicia, S.A. is a Spanish telecommunications company that offers fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in Galicia, Spain.
History
In 1998, when the telecommunication industry was liberalized,[jargon] Galicia, Spain adjudicated[jargon] a contest to deploy wire in the area. At stake in the contest were three territorial demarcations: A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela and the rest of Galicia. The contracts for the three demarcations were won by the Galician Group of Companies for the Wire, Group Wire S.A.[citation needed] The two group companies would later merge to form R Cable y Telecomunicaciones Galicia,[1] S.A. when the demarcations were consolidated administratively.[citation needed]
R provides television, broadband Internet, and mobile telephony services to over 820,000 homes and companies in the Galicia region. The television service brings over a hundred channels to customers with the related signal decoder. It includes Oriel, a pay television service where customers can order films, sports programming, and television series. For customers without the signal decoder, R provides about two dozen channels. R also provides TDT channels and other channels for those with the DVB-C cable reception system. For Internet service, R offers various speed packages from 3Mbit/s to 100Mbit/s.[note 1] R was one of first operators to offer 100 Mbit/s asymmetric speeds in Spain.[citation needed] On 20 November 2007, the eighth anniversary of the company, R launched a mobile telephony service as a Mobile virtual network operator (i.e. it uses the antenna network of another company). The service went live on 3 December, and has garnered 190,000 customers.[citation needed]
Corporate affairs
R has had numerous changes in ownership, including 25 major shareholding exchanges.[citation needed] One of its most important changes was in September 2008, when Caixanova, NCG Banco's predecessor, bought the 35.44% held by Unión Fenosa (which was acquired by Gas Natural), which gave Caixanova a 66.24% share.[citation needed]
In April 2010, British private equity firm CVC Capital Partners acquired a 35% stake in R.[1][2] In November, CVC exercised an option to increase its stake to 70%[3] in an agreement in which the current shareholders looked for "to guarantee the future of the Galicia City of the project, keeping its current social headquarters".[need quotation to verify] In February 2014, CVC acquired the remaining 30% of the stock from NCG Banco.[4][5][better source needed] In November 2015, Euskaltel acquired R.
