Telefónica said it is taking "another significant step" in its agreement with US-based conversational AI search startup Perplexity by offering Perplexity Pro free for twelve months to Movistar users in Spain.
According to the Spanish operator, particular benefits of Perplexity are that it offers the ability to ask follow-up questions related to the responses obtained, as well as upload files and images for analysis with the option to ask questions about the content, as well as summarize it.
The latest move comes a few months after Telefónica signed a global commercial agreement with the AI search specialist that initially covers customers in Brazil, Spain and the UK. Around the time of the signing in October 2024, the operator also invested in Perplexity via corporate venture capital arm Wayra. Furthermore, Telefónica has already launched a TV-focused version of the app for its Movistar Plus+ customers.
Aravind Srinivas, CEO and co-founder of Perplexity, described Telefónica as an "ideal first partner in Spain as we expand our presence" and suggested that the Movistar Plus+ voice command has been well received so far.
Telco backing in Europe and Asia
Telefónica is one of a small but influential group of operators to have thrown its weight behind Perplexity, which is based on AI models GPT-4o, OpenAI o1, Grok-2 and Claude 3.5.
To find out which operators these are, it seemed a good opportunity to test Perplexity itself. According to the results, "at least five" telcos have backed Perplexity Pro to date: Deutsche Telekom, Singtel, SK Telecom, SoftBank and Telefónica.
The answer seems to be bang on the money, with public announcements from the five operators over the past year. For instance, Deutsche Telekom, SoftBank and SK Telecom all formed partnerships with Perplexity in 2024.
Like Telefónica, SK Telecom and Singtel are offering free one-year subscriptions to Perplexity Pro for their customers. In addition, the Spanish operator's regional peer Deutsche Telekom recently launched Magenta AI in the MeinMagenta app in cooperation with Perplexity, and offered Perplexity Pro free of charge via loyalty program Magenta Moments.
Notably, Perplexity was namechecked as a new partner by Deutsche Telekom CEO Timotheus Höttges during the group's Capital Markets Day in 2024. At last year's Mobile World Congress, Höttges also promoted the idea of an app-free, AI phone concept, developed in partnership with Qualcomm and Brain.ai, and said in five to ten years' time, "no one will be using apps."
So, what else can Perplexity tell us? It says the partnerships with telcos aim to expand Perplexity Pro's reach to millions of telecoms customers across different countries, for example. Good to know!
However, responses to a question about how Perplexity Pro compares to other AI search engines showed more than a little bias, claiming it is better overall compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT and SearchGPT, and Google's Gemini.
The search engine at least graciously admits that "as of early 2025, AI search engines are still evolving and may not fully replace traditional search engines for all use cases."
Source: https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/telef-nica-offers-perplexity-pro-for-free-in-spain