[This arti­cle orig­i­nally found here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2356014,00.asp]

MADRID, Nov 17 (Reuters) — Spanish cit­i­zens will have a legal right from 2011 to be able to buy broad­band inter­net of at least one megabyte per sec­ond at a reg­u­lated price wher­ever they live, the country’s indus­try min­is­ter said on Tuesday.

The tele­coms oper­a­tor hold­ing the so-called “uni­ver­sal ser­vice” con­tract would have to guar­an­tee it could offer “rea­son­ably” priced broad­band through­out Spain, said Miguel Sebas­t­ian in a state­ment sent to media.

For­mer state monop­oly Tele­fon­ica has always held the uni­ver­sal con­tract aimed at pro­tect­ing con­sumers in poorly pop­u­lated areas from being cut off in cases where oper­a­tors would oth­er­wise con­sider pro­vid­ing the ser­vice unprofitable.

The ser­vice also sub­sidises tele­coms to dis­abled users.

Until now, the “uni­ver­sal ser­vice” has only guar­an­teed inter­net via tele­phone line, fixed tele­phone, direc­tory ser­vice and tele­phone booths.

Ear­lier this month, Spain’s tele­coms reg­u­la­tor, the CMT, pro­posed that Tele­fon­ica, Voda­fone and Orange foot the cost of pro­vid­ing the uni­ver­sal ser­vice for 2006, which it judged had cost 75.34 mil­lion euros, with Tele­fon­ica pay­ing 71 per­cent of the costs.

Adding inter­net to the uni­ver­sal ser­vice would increase the future cost of the uni­ver­sal service.

The yearly cal­cu­la­tions of the cost of the ser­vice take about two years to complete.

Con­sumer group FACUA said it wel­comed that broad­band inter­net would finally be a right but said the speed was insuf­fi­cient and the mea­sure should be intro­duced before 2011.

“FACUA calls on the min­is­ter to speed up the mea­sure, increase the speed and to set a rea­son­able price,” the organ­i­sa­tion said in a statement.

(Report­ing by Sarah Morris)