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Re:Uber services suspended in Barcelona by jrvidal on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:17AM (#19053021)
* How much is "way cheaper"? I've heard that VTC licenses are getting more and more expensive, around ~50K € (if I remember correctly).

* What do you mean by "concentrated in very few hands (mainly Uber and Cabify)"? Surely Uber and Cabify don't directly own those licenses, right?

Re:Uber services suspended in Barcelona by m0skit0 on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:53AM (#19053175)
* You can find VTC licenses for ~60,000€.

* Uber and Cabify don't own those licenses directly but their CEOs and investors do (https://www.elmundo.es/cronica/2018/08/05/5b659a44468aeb9a29...).

Re:Uber services suspended in Barcelona by narag on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:29AM (#19053082)
The reason VTC licenses are expensive is that it were first illegal, then EU forced legality with a directive, then government found a loophole to forbid them again, so there was a window of a few years when they could be obtained.

So artificial scarcity.

Edit: Oh and BTW it was taxi drivers who mostly benefited by the price boom. They bought the licenses for less than 200 and sold them by thousands.