Raunchy Sex Phone Lines a Hit in Spain

Spain’s state-owned telephone monopoly has just discovered what phone companies in the United States and Britain have known for years: sex sells.

Adult entertainment lines with names like Eroticon and Adrenaline, introduced about five months ago, are now the hottest business in Spain, proving a gold mine for both Telefonica S.A. and owners of the sex phone services.

The lines draw an average of 18,000 calls a day at a rate of about $9 for a lusty fantasy, according to the sex line owners.

“The response has been incredible,” said Hugo Vailante who with his wife and two Dutch partners runs Passionline, the country’s first adult entertainment line.

His company, Telelinea S.L., expects revenues to top $5 million in its first eight months. Vailante estimates that the figure will at least double in 1993.

For Telefonica, the potential to turn huge profits from the sex lines and other dial data services is even greater.

A single call costs an average of six cents per minute of which Telefonica nets four cents, said Marta Echavarri, who runs the phone company’s dial data lines.

To buy access to Telefonica’s new digital system, a subscriber pays an initial $12,000, a monthly fee of $200 and a yearly charge of $2,000.

Six companies currently offer sex line services.

“We still don’t have precise data on how much revenue the lines have generated for Telefonica in the first six months, but it’s well beyond our expectations,” Echavarri said.

“It’s certainly a very good business for us.”

She said 66 companies have asked Telefonica to set up the service in five months, about the same number of petitions British Telecom received in five years.

Spain has been eager to establish sex lines for some time. Telefonica saw the potential long ago from the number of calls placed to U.S. sex services, but the digital technology was not available until this year.

“Hola, I can fulfill your every fantasy,” the tape begins with a woman’s husky tones promising a gamut of sexual pleasures.

Some sex lines are slickly professional, some amateurish.

But they all offer a big advantage over many of their foreign counterparts: Callers can just dial and listen without the bother of giving special codes or credit card numbers.

That could change soon when Telefonica takes measures to restrict access to the lines.

The company says it is acting on its own to limit abuse of the lines, but reports of private companies and individuals racking up enormous phone bills may be spurring the initiative.

“It’s not up to Telefonica to say who should or should not call the lines, but we do expect to help users rationalize costs,” Echavarri said. She did not detail what measures were being considered.

“We have 20,000 people calling us every day who would strongly object to any kind of blocking,” Vailante contends, but like many of his colleagues he is preparing for the worst.

The company is researching a variety of less salacious data lines ranging from horoscope readings to dial-a-joke. Although they don’t intend to drop the sex lines, more modest services are in the works where clients can arrange dates or just chat with fellow users.