Adolfo Cuevas Teja says goodbye to the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) with the last minute of Monday, February 28, and before the lack of definition of the Presidency of the Republic and the Senate for collaborating in the election of a new president for that autonomous body, Commissioner Javier Juárez Mojica will be the new head of the IFT by internal statutes from Tuesday, March 1 and until October 2025, as long as those powers do not have a new president commissioner at the time.
From the clearest perspective, Adolfo Cuevas Teja was the third president of the IFT after two governments of Gabriel Contreras and the interim of Adriana Labardini. His, also an internship, is the fourth presidency that he has led the Federal Institute of Telecommunications in his eight years of life.
Cuevas Teja, always associated with the broadcasting and telecommunications industry since 1992 due to his time in different areas of Imer and the former Cofetel, had an almost perfect score in the selection exam to become commissioner of the new sector regulator and integrate from in 2013 with Labardini and Contreras, the part of the IFT that until now had been analyzing the legality and right of everything that authority resolved.
All the presidents of the IFT have been lawyers to date and Juárez Mojica will be the first engineer president of this technical regulator, whether his government lasts one hour or the three years that still remain in his work as commissioner.
The legacy of Adolfo Cuevas Teja
The presidency of Adolfo Cuevas was characterized by walking in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and by a very strong collaboration with the industry, but it did take time to react, when other regulators in Latin America soon realized what the impacts of Covid-19 meant. to the economies and the extreme importance that telecommunications took on in the sanitary confinement.
Under his presidency, with regard to the pure work of the IFT, issues such as the Mexican policy on Net Neutrality were determined; the designation of Televisa and Megacable as agents with substantial market power in pay television; rate freedom for Telmex and Telnor; the restricted video concession for Claro TV that was left up in the air; the continuation of the operation processes of the wholesalers Red Nacional Última Milla and Red Última Milla del Noroeste; the commercial bankruptcy of Altán Redes; the fight of Internet companies against network operators for the 6GHz band; the sale of Maxcom; the still ongoing AM/FM radio tender and the unsuccessful auction of bands to improve 4G-LTE coverage; Movistar’s maneuvers for using the latest generation network without its own spectrum and América Móvil’s for keeping Axtel’s 3.5 GHz spectrum. The scandalous National Registry of Mobile Telephony Users (Panaut) also occurred.
The first 5G network startups of AT&T and Telcel between 2021 and 2022 are part of their legacy as well.
Rebellion in the IFT against Cuevas
In the necessary communication of the IFT with the powers of the Federation, the presidency that expired was marked by the scandalous story that the proposal to merge the IFT with the Federal Commission of Economic Competition (Cofece) in the same Spanish-style body, came out from the office of a collaborator of Adolfo Cuevas.
This fact caused distrust of the rest of the commissioners towards the interim president and on October 2, 2020 he faced their rebellion regarding the election of internal officials.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) agreed with Cuevas, but since then the rest of the Plenary of IFT commissioners remained dissatisfied with his government, especially because President Cuevas never made his talks transparent to them in the Senate on the merger of all the regulatory bodies into one, as the other commissioners charged at the time.
The other scandal was the notorious case of sexual harassment within the IFT in which the affected woman ended up being fired and then reinstated. And all this atmosphere became even more tense with the constant presidential message that the 4T persists in disappearing the autonomous bodies, starting with the IFT.
Cuevas, a controversial commissioner
Adolfo Cuevas Teja’s detractors estimate that this president failed to consolidate the existence of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications and, on the contrary, left leaving it weakened. His votes, stated various industry players, were very erratic, with a similar accent in favor of the 4T and as commissioner he did not like to attend meetings in the IFT building. Nor is it explained how his government failed to do more work in verifying compliance with the obligations of the preponderant economic agents in telecommunications and broadcasting, and that at the beginning of his government he had too much closeness with the Union of Telephone Operators of the Mexican Republic.
Contrary to these versions, Adolfo Cuevas Teja was very present in forums with regulated agents and authorities at different levels and civil organizations, always very open to accompanying guidelines on procedures and explaining the regulatory work of the IFT. He is remembered like this in all those digital transformation forums and with high-tech companies.
It should be remembered that in his argument to become president of the IFT in 2017, he was the first and most widespread candidate to speak about a potential and necessary regulation of digital platforms, when even in the United States the possible partition of Facebook had not yet been considered.
His statement at the time is legendary: “Forgive me Facebook, Google, Netflix… whoever. If there is something that potentially harms this country, we must intervene,” Cuevas Teja said that time before the senators, but they did not listen to him, because their understanding and vision remained in 2G technology.
For the journalists who follow the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors in Mexico, the outgoing commissioner president of the IFT granted few interviews and when he accepted them, he only followed the strict schedule of questions previously agreed upon and it is notorious that he had a predilection for using communication channel to the radio program “Financial Formula”, because his voice became daily there. This medium made a final request for an interview with commissioner Adolfo Cuevas Tejas, through the press office of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications. Until the publication of this text, no response was obtained.
The importance of their participation in the IFT
Adolfo Cuevas graduated in law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he specialized in constitutional and administrative law. He also has a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
On September 10, 2013, he was ratified by the Senate of the Republic as commissioner of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications, a position that expires on the last day of February 2022 and since then he has participated in two hundred ordinary and extraordinary sessions of the plenary session. commissioners in which important issues were voted for the improvement of the connectivity of Mexicans for many years and issues that impacted and will continue to impact different companies for many years to come.
In all that time, the issues of the new open television channels were resolved, of the creation of new regional radio and television channels; various spectrum bidding processes for telephony, Internet, satellite services, and concessions were renewed for up to 50 years, among many other issues. In the same period, companies arrived, left, perished and/or changed hands in Mexico, and Adolfo Cuevas participated in all of this with his vote:
February 2022, enablement of 3.5 GHz for Telcel 5G services. Vote: in favour.
“It is the beginning of the large-scale deployment of 5G services in Mexico, through this particular operator and in a much broader spectrum of services that will occur in the future; however, it is a decisive and very relevant step, as the operator has told us in work meetings, in the sense of a network that we can truly call national in scope”.
May 2021, controversy against the Panaut. Vote: in favour.
“We have elements to consider that there may be an affectation to different spheres of competence of the Institute; initially I would refer to the case of the budget issue”.
August 2021, tariff freedom for Telmex. Vote: in favour.
“The fact that a measure like this proposal can be discussed today speaks of the success of the telecommunications reform in general and the particular success of various preponderance measures; additionally, they are a faithful reflection of the success achieved by the operators, due to the confidence generated by the reform, due to the confidence generated in the IFT’s actions, which has led to a visible and drastic change in market shares in various areas of the country” .
December 2019, controversy against salary reduction for commissioners. Nay.
“I will not accompany a project to present a constitutional controversy because I do not see the underlying case, given the new reality of the country of an affectation that makes the autonomy of the IFT unfeasible and also because I consider that rather a rethinking of the relationship with the Congress, which allows the IFT to carry out its functions in a different reality”.
February 2018, functional separation in Telmex-Telnor. Nay.
“In the measures in which the decisions already taken have real validity and have a decisive impact on the change we are seeking, that is nothing more than reinforcing the type of decisions that this Plenary could probably make today.”
August 2017, Time Warner-AT&T merger. Vote: differentiated.
“I am generally in favor of the project (…) It is fortunate as far as the mobile telecommunications market is concerned, in the sense that it will foreseeably help the expansion of a group that has come to detonate an important tone of competition in Mexico , thus justifying the manifest purposes of the telecommunications reform, and I am referring to the presence of AT&T in Mexico”.
September 2015, substantial power of Televisa in pay television. Vote: in favour.
“I think that the analysis should have been broader, deeper and more complex, and I believe that the accusations and questions from some of my peers clearly indicate that this is the situation we are facing.”