Through the training program EsTeLa (Latin American Technical School) Telefónica hopes to train more than 17,000 technicians responsible for installing and repairing services at all of its business operations in the region during 2008.

The project represents an investment of € 2 million at the corporate level, an amount to which they will add specific additional investments of subsidiaries in each country. Peru and Brazil were the first countries to implement this technical school, followed by Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

Telefónica began offering a training pilot program during 2005. That year, it agreed to train 5,400 technicians, out of that total, 1,600 achieved certification. The school has been functioning since mid-2006 and combines attendance courses at one of their training centers with online training courses through the corporate portal developed by Educaterra. Moreover, certified technicians’ receive mobile devices through which they can access to educational content of the system.

The plan is aimed to both technicians in plant and technicians of third party companies’. The company hopes to add by the end of 2008: 2,300 technicians in Argentina, 1,400 in Colombia, 3,600 in Chile, 7,200 in Brazil and 2,900 in Peru, which have gone through this technical school.

EsTeLa is an integrated plan for all operations of Telefónica in the region. However, each country is responsible for developing the group's training content: Chile is responsible for ADSL and IPTV, Peru (Speedy and Job position), Colombia (Human Resources), Brazil (DTH) and Argentina (Call Centers, Supervisors and metrics).

Fernando Fernández González, Network Services director of Telefónica, said to Convergencialatina that "the objective of EsTeLa is to train the best technicians in value-added services and ensure that by 2010, half of the students complete their certifications."

The executive explained that in the case of Argentina, the program was launched in September 2007 with a focus on Speedy (ADSL service) "and contributed 200 certified technicians by the end of the year."