Telephone companies AT&T and Telcel paid a global sum of 855 million 722,479.73 pesos, around 42.2 million dollars, to maintain the exploitation of various regional blocks of the 1.9 GHz band or PCS for twenty more years, counted from April of the year 2025.
The companies managed to renew a total of 15 concession titles for frequencies located between the ranges of 1890 and 1975 Megahertz, according to each particular case. Owning the frequencies will help those two brands maintain and improve the quality of their 4G-LTE services.
For this frequency endorsement, the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) used a criterion of charging compensation for the use of spectrum more attached to the international value of the PCS band, due to the fact that these types of frequencies are expensive to acquire in Mexico. before the economic criteria imposed by the Chamber of Deputies and the Ministry of Finance in the Federal Law of Rights for annual payments for its use.
Due to this determination of these two government bodies that makes radio bands more expensive, some telephone companies have decided to return their PCS spectrum frequencies to the State and no one wanted to buy the 1.9 GHz band either in the last IFT-10 spectrum auction of the year 2021.
The only buyers in that auction were Telcel and AT&T, which bought AWS bands, 2.5 GHz and 800 MHz, some of them with similar technical characteristics and greater coverage than these regional PCS that the two companies endorsed in March 2022.
Even with the application of the criterion on the international median value of the PCS band used by the IFT as a reference, the cost of acquiring that spectrum turned out to be 56% more expensive in Mexico, the regulator recognized in its resolutions P/IFT/ 090322/138 and P/IFT/230322/191.
“Having used the same reference that has been used to value the PCS bands until the beginning of 2019, would be detrimental to the development of the telecommunications sector (…) The compensation amounts provided for in this resolution are intended not to contribute to the already exposed overvaluation of the PCS band and promote the provision of Internet access and mobile telephony services with better quality levels; generate competition to favor affordable prices for citizens, as well as contribute to connectivity and reduce the digital divide among the population”, argued the IFT.
The Federal Institute of Telecommunications recognizes that the high tax burdens for the exploitation of the spectrum have become barriers to entry for new competitors and discourage those who already provide services, since they make frequency returns, complicating the deployment of infrastructure, investments and limiting coverage.
In breakdown, the IFT renewed a total of nine concession titles for Telcel on March 9, to exploit regional PCS blocks in the 1890-1895 and 1970-1975 MHz ranges; that is, a section of 10 MHz and in each of the nine cellular regions into which the Mexican territory has been divided.
Telcel paid 692 million 622,982.95 pesos to retain those nine concession titles.
On March 23, the AT&T company managed to renew six titles that include the exploitation of the 1905-1910 and 1985-1990 MHz segments in the cellular regions 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8. AT&T paid for all these frequencies a total of 163 million 99,496.78 pesos.