internet

Dídac Lee is on the FC Barcelona Board of Directors, charged with managing New Technologies. In an exclusive interview with CNA, Lee considers that it is vital for FC Barcelona to be close to the fans, and social networks are the key to reaching this goal. Thanks to Lee, Barça is now the leading sports club in the field. Lee is a renowned Catalan entrepreneur and the Chinese work culture ethos has influenced him both in his life and work.

The Mobile World Congress has attracted more than 60,000 delegates from the most influential mobile companies on the planet to the Catalan capital. The event is the most important of the year, and it’s a great opportunity for developing business in the sector. The delegates will explore the way the mobile industry is redefining communication and will try to get business contracts related to the new era in smart phone technology. The organisation motto for this year’s edition is ‘Redefining Mobile!’

Spanish multinational telecommunications company Telefónica will offer Internet access through optical fibre to every home in Barcelona before the summer. The company’s General Director in Catalonia, Kim Faura, has also explained that Telefónica has hired 1,300 people to carry out the operation.

The Catalan public television and radio broadcaster continues to lead the audience share in Catalonia. Regarding newspapers, ‘La Vanguardia’ tops the ranking in Catalonia, followed by ‘El Periódico’. The number of consumers choosing newspapers in Catalan has grown by 29% in the last year, thanks to the recently created ‘Ara’ and the new edition of ‘La Vanguardia’ in Catalan. This totals 48% of its readers.

FC Barcelona and Tencent have agreed to develop Barça’s brand in China. The deal will allow FC Barcelona to reach a massive audience as well as generate significant revenue.

The Spanish telecommunications multinational commits to offering a 100 Mbps broadband wireless Internet connection throughout Barcelona city in 2012, which will multiply the current capacity by 14. 4G broadband is already offered in specific spots, such as trade fair venues, conference centres or at Barcelona Airport. However, its potential use throughout the city was one of the conditions for hosting the Mobile World Congress, which chose Barcelona as its organising city until 2018.

Catalonia is also leader in percentage of Internet users with 66% of the population connected, two percentage points above the Spanish figure, according to a report by Telefónica.

The ‘Viquipèdia’, the Wikipedia version in Catalan language, is currently ranked 10th out of the 272 languages used in this encyclopaedia quality rankings.

The company sells high end clothing on the Internet. It distributes over 25.000 items of clothing daily amongst its 3,7 million clients. The centre will deliver on demand from Spain and Italy.

The most popular video site on the internet is finally navigable in Catalan. The head of the popular campaign tells CNA how he achieved this goal.

The puntCAT Foundation attended the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) meeting in Cartagena, Colombia last week. Proposals for similar domains such as ‘.scot’ and .quebec’ were put aside for future discussion.

Candidates from all the parties represented in the current Catalan Parliament participated in the pioneer initiative ‘Twittervista’, an interview made by the citizens via Twitter. From the 6 parties, 3 party leaders and 3 other main party figures all on the ballot for the November elections participated. The avalanche of questions caused some technical problems, which were mostly solved.

Over 1,600 people have signed a virtual petition for a Catalan translation of twitter. The initiative was started by the Catalan journalist Albert Cuesta.

A new initiative kicked off Wednesday at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival to broaden the presence of Catalan films on an international scale. VEOcatalanfilms.cat will offer streaming of Catalan cinema for industry professionals.

The European Cultural and Linguistic Internet Domains Association presents the domain .cat as an example to follow for other cultural and linguistic communities such as the Welsh, Scottish, Galician or Basque.