Jordi Compte Batista, co-founder of Spanish cable company Jazztel, has launched his own competing cable outfit dubbed Flash10.com, according to Spanish news reports.

Flash10 plans to offer telephone, data, internet and multimedia services in 32 cities in the Catalan region of Spain.

Compte is said to be seeking international backers for the new company, which reportedly plans to invest some $500m over the next ten years to build a wideband fibre optic infrastructure.

Cable is an emerging market in Spain. One of the country's leading operators, Ono (formerly Cableuropa), boasted close to 500,000 homes passed for cable TV and a little over 53,000 clients for the service as of March 31.