Mexico. There is a positive correlation between the reduction of the Digital Divide and the development of countries. This means that the greater adoption of Fixed and Mobile Broadband improves social welfare, allowing the population of a country to have tools that allow better development.
In Mexico, at the end of 2017 there were 82.2 million accesses to Mobile Broadband (BAM), which translates into a growth of 40.9% when compared to the end of 2015. This growth occurred from the Reform in Telecommunications and Broadcasting which generated a drastic change in the rates of mobile services and allowed many users to access BAM packages at a lower price than they paid a couple of months ago to obtain only short calls and messages.
Despite this progress, we find that there are still users who cannot access BAM fully given the capabilities of the equipment they have. These terminals only connect to the network via 2G, which does not allow them to have the adequate download speed to transmit and receive information.
According to the National Chamber of the Electronic Industry of Telecommunications and Information Technologies (CANIETI), there are currently 27 million people who still use 2G networks, which do not have access to better technology either due to lack of equipment or investment in infrastructure within the localities in which they have access.
These users generate only 0.5% of the total data traffic, as this technology significantly limits the browsing speed and does not allow the use of data for videoconferencing, internet calls, streaming, etc.
The problem is of such importance that CANIETI, during its 2018 National Convention held last week, spoke about the possibility of generating a program to replace for free the devices that are still 2G, however, the above would have an approximate cost of $ 9,800 million pesos which would have to be solved between industry and government.
Migrating users to 2G is more complicated than it seems because there are many featurephones, smartphones and M2M terminals (for example, collection terminals) that would have to be replaced with a high cost and the time necessary to do so.
It is very important that they begin to define concrete actions as has been done in other countries such as prohibiting the sale (if, they still sell them) of devices that only come with 2G, as well as defining a date in the medium term to turn off said technology so that the industry, together with equipment sellers and citizens can reach it without losing a single BAM connection along the way.
I hope we've learned something from the analog TV blackout!
Text written by Gonzalo Rojon of The Competitive Intelligence Unit.
