BUENOS AIRES – Spanish telecoms group Telefonica said Wednesday it will invest 4.5 billion pesos ($980.3 million) this year in Argentina, focusing those expenditures on network deployment, expansion of its subscriber base and the launch of new digital services.

“This investment is aimed at contributing to the growth of the different economic sectors, understanding that communications are vital to the country’s competitiveness,” the president of Telefonica’s Argentine unit, Luis Blasco Bosqued, said in a statement.

The company says it expects to reach 5 million fixed broadband, mobile Internet and data transmission subscribers by year’s end.

The investment plan for this year calls for developing new services, increasing broadband capacity, expanding its mobile network and deploying its fiber-optic network to offices of large corporate customers and small businesses.

Telefonica has a total of 23 million subscribers in Argentina, including 17 million mobile telephone customers and some 4 million broadband users.

The company, which has roughly 20,000 direct employees in Argentina, invested some 2.6 billion pesos ($566.4 million) in the South American country last year. EFE