Vodafone Share News (VOD)

MADRID, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Telefonica has cutprices for its pay-television services and included them in abundled package in its latest effort to hold onto a slidingcustomer base in a increasingly competitive environment. Former monopoly Telefonica said on Wednesday it had loweredprices for its "Imagenio" pay-TV services and launched anentertainment package, featuring TV series and films, for 12euros ($16) a month. At the end of September, Telefonica had 760,000 pay-TVaccesses in Spain, a fall of 6 percent year-on-year and said thebusiness had been hit by the government's decision to hike valueadded tax hike to 21 percent from 8 percent on Sept. 1. Telefonica, Spain's no. 2 player in the television market,launched a television, Internet, fixed line and mobile bundle onOct. 1 to attract cash-strapped consumers shopping around forthe best deal in the second recession in three years. Consumer confidence has plummeted in Spain, where retailsales have fallen for more than two years straight. Theunemployment rate stands at one in four, with the economy notexpected to grow again until late 2013. The company gained 35,470 new broadband customers in thefirst month of the bundled package offer, Fusion, according todata from Spain's telecoms regulator, the CMT, though itcontinued to lose mobile clients. A price war between mobile operators has heated up in recentmonths in Spain, after the biggest players Telefonica andVodafone lost customers to rivals after scrappingsmartphone subsidies. Vodafone went back on that decision in November butTelefonica hopes Fusion will offset losses from endingsubsidies. France Telecom's Orange has fought back with asimilar package offering television, internet, fixed line andmobile. Smaller player Jazztel also provides bundledInternet and television packages. Telefonica, which hopes to reduce its debt to 50 billioneuros by the end of 2012 from 56 billion euros at end-Sept, hassaid it is considering listing its Latin American businesses toraise cash. The company transferred about half of the shares of itsPeruvian unit to its Latin American holding company onTuesday, in a step closer to an initial public offering. It also said it planned to invest $2 billion in itsArgentine unit in 2013 and 2014. Telefonica's Latin Americanbusinesses now account for more of its revenue thanrecession-hit Europe.