Mexico. The Plenary of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications, IFT, approved the issuance of two minutes of judgment, one in favor of AT&T and another in favor of Telefónica, in the Public Tender to concession the use, exploitation and commercial exploitation of 120 MHz of radio spectrum available in the frequency band 2500-2690 MHz (Tender No. IFT-7).
In accordance with the Bidding Rules, within 10 working days after the issuance of the minutes of judgment, these must be notified to the winning participants. From this notification, the winning participants will have 30 working days to comply with the payment of the corresponding considerations, as an essential requirement to be able to receive their concession titles.
On August 6, the bidding procedure for the tender concluded, which reached an amount of more than 2,100 million pesos for the 120 MHz of spectrum that were available.
Based on the results obtained in this bidding process, AT&T and Telefónica will have spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band, which will be used for the deployment of mobile broadband services, which will allow them to provide a higher quality offer to the national telecommunications market.
With the spectrum allocated in this tender, these operators will be able to offer mobile telephony and internet services with greater speed and quality, as well as move towards the deployment of fifth-generation (5G) technology.
In addition, thanks to this tender, the areas of the country that have mobile services will increase, since the winning participants will have coverage obligations, which include the provision of services in at least 200 of the 557 populations of between one thousand and 5 thousand inhabitants that do not yet have mobile service; cover at least 10 of the 13 metropolitan areas of the country with more than one million inhabitants, with its own infrastructure in the 2.5 GHz band; and cover the trunk roads associated with five special economic zones decreed by the Federal Government, within a maximum period of four years.
In this way, AT&T would increase its spectrum holding by 80 MHz which represents an increase of 65.7%, while Telefónica would increase its spectrum holding by 40 MHz, an increase of 62.7%.
With the allocation of the radio spectrum in this tender, the mobile telecommunications market in Mexico not only has greater resources for the provision of better services, but also a better distribution of spectral tenure in our country is achieved and, with it, better conditions of competition in that market.
