Mexico. On March 16, the Federal Institute of Telecommunications, IFT, opened a public consultation process that, in fact, aims to validate the decision adopted by the regulator since last December in the sense of easing some restrictions to which the Preponderant Economic Agent in Telecommunications (AEP-T) is subject.
For the members of the Institute of Telecommunications Law (IDET) it is alarming that it is the body itself responsible for imposing on the AEP-T the asymmetric measures necessary to avoid affecting competition and free competition in the telecommunications sector, which chooses to make some of these measures more flexible, for the free benefit of América Móvil and, in clear contravention of the provisions of the 2013 telecommunications constitutional reform and the Federal Law on Telecommunications and Broadcasting.
The IFT knows that the figure of preponderance is constitutionally different from that of the relevant market and that the intention of the Permanent Constituent Assembly is that it cannot be diluted in consideration of specific markets, either by service or by geographical coverage. Prior to the 2013 reform, the now AEP-T was successful in lobbying regulators to determine each market to evade regulation and litigating in court the delimitation of each of them. That is why the preponderance encompasses the telecommunications sector as an indivisible whole at the national level.
On the other hand, it is noteworthy the speed with which the IFT seeks to allow the AEP-T to enjoy full freedom to set the rates of the indirect access service to the local loop in some geographical areas, taking into account that other obligations derived from the Second Biennial Review of Asymmetric Preponderance Measures concluded only last December have not even entered into force. at which time the regulator approved for itself, the power to grant the AEP-T something inconceivable, to have tariff freedom, despite maintaining its preponderant character by continuing to accumulate around 60% of market share of the entire telecommunications sector.
It is highly disconcerting for IDET that it is now perceived that a lax or generous approach to the importance of maintaining the various asymmetric obligations and regulatory principles provided for not only by the IFT, but by the Constitution and the Federal Law on Telecommunications and Broadcasting is gaining ground in the regulatory body. against an approach that demonstrates a clear concern to consolidate competition in a telecommunications sector in which there is still a high level of concentration in the hands of the same economic actor that has clearly dominated the sector since 1997 when the opening to competition took place.
It is incomprehensible that there are those within the IFT who think that because in certain local markets there has been a decrease in the concentration of some specific service, it is already possible to think of freeing the AEP-T from the burden that must always be designed for that agent as a whole and in all its markets.
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Had this type of regulatory approach been adopted in the past, unsupported and generous with the most powerful agent at the dawn of opening up to competition in the long-distance market in our country, when it was known that there was intense competition in the local markets of Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, the few achievements that could be obtained at the national level would have disappeared much faster than what was observed in those years, in which if no one within the IFT remembers, it is worth pointing out to them: the dominant operator ended up recovering much of the ground that had yielded to the competition, largely due to the permissive attitude of the regulator of that time.
That is why the IDET respectfully urges the IFT commissioners and other officials of that regulatory body not to set aside the regulatory history of our country, as well as to review what have been the consequences in other periods of having lowered their guard or having thought that competition in Mexico was already enough.
Text published by the Institute of Telecommunications Law, IDET.
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