The tender for 41 spectrum lots available in different radio bands to grow and improve the quality of services 4G-LTE in the country and that is now close to the stage of delivery of titles of concession to AT&T and Telcel companies As the only two winning participants, it also attracted two other companies interested in buying frequencies, but who were unable to gather the necessary documentation in time to continue in the process or present themselves on time at the established times.
The Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) said in a document that bidding process spectrum identified as IFT-10 Other actors arrived who presented a manifestation of interest, thus complying with the official stage that accredited them as interested to move forward in the contest.
On that occasion, two other interested parties were received, but they did not provide information; those who did not provide information according to the very bases of the process automatically lose their status as interested parties, so there is no longer the possibility that any other interested party could participate in this tender ”, reads a document from the IFT.
Because these participants could not gather the documentation, the authority could not issue them a certificate of participation so that later, in September, they could present economic offers for some lot of spectrum. Due to confidentiality, the regulator did not reveal the names of those two interested parties who could not continue in the contest.
It was then that the IFT delivered only two certificates of participation in September and not four: one to the company Radiomóvil Dipsa (Telcel) and another to AT&T Digital Communications (AT&T), and defined from that moment the spectrum quotas that each of these two telephone companies could buy, based on their own volume of frequencies that they had already purchased in previous bidding processes.
In this way, the versions expressed in the telecommunications industry Regarding the fact that the “gravel” spectrum tender, due to its diversity of lots, sizes and coverage, did not attract the attention of actors beyond Telcel and AT&T.
The IFT recognized that the mediocre success achieved by IFT-10 was due to the fact that the Secretary of Finance and the Congress of the Union are the actors that complicate the placement of bands in the mobile market, due to the high tax burden imposed on the winning companies for exploiting spectrum frequencies in services such as telephony and internet, but not because of the bidding process itself, because there are regional operators that have expressed interest in buying bands to create or complete 4G-LTE covers in very particular places in the country.
In IFT-10 from mobile spectrum, Telcel and AT&T companies offered a total of 1,350 million 852,000 pesos to exploit three blocks of spectrum that will allow them to improve the quality and coverage of their cellular networks 4G-LTE in the markets of the Mexico City and particular regions of the rest of the Mexican Republic.
The AT&T company was interested in a block in the 800 MHz band, with coverage in the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur; in Sonora and Sinaloa, and in Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo León, Coahuila and Tamaulipas. For this block, the company offered 374 million pesos. The other block that AT&T acquired is also located on 800 MHz and offers coverage in the cities of Mexico, Puebla, León, Guadalajara, Cancun, Veracruz and Mérida. Due to the market that this particular block represents, here AT&T bid with 706 million 852,000 pesos to get hold of that spectrum.
Telcel was only interested in a block of the 2.5 GHz band, with coverage in various municipalities and other local areas of that band and that in the past was a spectrum concessioned to companies that could not exploit them in services of mobile telephony and internet, and therefore the IFT began a process of recovery of signals to be placed in a new tender, as was the case now.
Telcel paid for those frequencies, known as the block C1 Within the IFT-10 Tender, a total of 270 million pesos and these are some of the frequencies that Telcel needed to be able to definitively configure a cellular network on the 2.5 GHz band, among the most suitable for 4G services -LTE for its power capacity and coverage in densely populated areas.
There were no bids for regional and national spectrum blocks in the 1.7 / 2.1 GHz (AWS) and 1900 MHz (PCS) bands, which were also in competition.
On October 26, the Federal Telecommunications Institute presented three proposals related to a redefinition of charges for the use of the 850 MHz and 600 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands, in order to bring social coverage to disconnected regions and to bring Mexico to fifth generation networks (5G).
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx