Telefonica, Spanish telecom firm, has joined hands with the country’s Association of Science and Technology Parks (APTE) to offer access to its blockchain to roughly 8,000 companies in Spain.
As per a report published by telecom news magazine TotalTele, Telefonica will install nodes of its Hyperledger powered blockchain at 52 venues of APTE.
During the three month trial period, companies will be backed to create apps on the network and permitted to trial using their own native tokens.
In November 2018, Telefonica collaborated with IT behemoth IBM to implement blockchain technology to handle global traffic of mobile phone calls.
In April 2019, Telefonica capitalized on its relationship with IBM to roll out its Cloud Garden service. The service is aimed to ease the adoption of new technologies such as blockchain, AI and big data.
The blockchain installed in collaboration with APTE capitalizes on the Cloud Garden facility. Maria Jesus Almazor, CEO of Telefonica Spain, asserted that the venture will result in considerable benefits to companies located at Spain’s science and technology parks:
“Companies housed in these scientific and technological parks will be able to benefit from the advantages of blockchain technology without having to face the inherent complexity of it, or have to dedicate resources to acquire the knowledge necessary to make the most of it.”
As per APTE’s website, a science and tech park is an endeavor normally linked with an area hosting educational organizations and research institutes fostering technology development. Parks of those kinds usually have a steady management that promotes technology sharing between enterprises and institutions partaking in its operations.
Crunchbase, which offers enterprise data, has calculated Telefonica’s yearly revenue to be roughly $54.10 billion. Additionally, the website also states that the telecom company also acquired a stake in the blockchain information verification platform Zamna by investing $5 million.
In February, a Microsoft media announcement revealed collaboration with Telefonica intending to build blockchain and artificial intelligence technology.
Telecom companies continue to invest in blockchain technology. Last November, Malta Enterprise, the government organization encouraging business, inked a MoU (Memorandum of understanding) with T-Systems, the Blockchain-as-a-Service service firm.
Last September, Union Mobile, the fourth biggest mobile carrier in South Korea, launched its blockchain venture called ELYNET. Likewise, in August last year, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance also released a compilation of real world use cases for blockchain in telecom sector.
