Merida.- Enrique Yamunifrom today president of the Canieti and one of the most influential men in telecommunications in Mexico for his forty years of experience in this sector, reported that the company Altán Redes owes 190 million pesos to his company Megacable Holdings and of which Yamuni himself is CEO.
The CEO of Megacable acknowledged throughout this Thursday, during the Canieti 2022 National Convention, that the business model that was devised for Red Compartida —a public-private wholesale services company and of which Altán Redes is the operating concessionaire— , is not working.
The shared network It is allowed to market telecommunications services exclusively to third-party companies, which in turn buy voice or data minute capacity to resell it in packages to the consumer.
This regulatory impediment is one of the obstacles that has complicated the viability of Red Compartida and its concessionaire Altan Networkswhich is now in a commercial bankruptcy process and facing debt commitments with twenty suppliers and other business partners, including Megacable, to which it owes those almost ten million dollars.
“Unfortunately it has not gone well (…) The private initiative provided the investment and the State, the infrastructure (spectrum). It has not worked as we would like; There have to be models for real competition”, said Enrique Yamuni earlier in the Canieti forums regarding the investments and capital returns of different telecommunications projects that are being developed in the country.
Megacable maintains a 3.83% shareholding in the Red Compartida and has no voting rights or significant influence on the decisions of the Altán Redes Red Compartida.
In the afternoon, Yamuni excused Megacable from agreeing with AT&T to use its network as an alternative to Altán’s network for Megamóvil services, its brand of telephony and mobile Internet. The reason that Megacable signed with AT & T, he said, was due to the phones of those users who, for technical reasons, do not have the authorization to work with Altán’s technology.
Enrique Yamuni then endorsed Megacable’s willingness to continue as a strategic partner of Red Compartida and Altán, despite the versions that point to an exit of that company from that project wholesaler:
“We always consider having a second alternative for the user, especially since there are new generation equipment that do not work well on the Altán frequencies because they have not been approved, so we need to have an alternative for those potential users,” said Enrique Yamuni.
“We continue with Altán and we have already agreed to enter into financing as suppliers to extend the terms of Altán’s debt to the company. Altán must have a debt with us of around 190 million pesos”, he stated.
Megacable will release the substantial market power
Enrique Yamuni said aside that his company will be able to overturn, through legal resources, the resolution of the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) that points to Megacable as a company with the possibility of disrupting the fixed market of some cities in its favor.
In December 2021, the IFT ruled that Megacable has substantial market power in the Mexican markets of San Mateo Atenco, Lerma, Toluca, Metepec and Zinacantepec; in Leon, Guanajuato; in Guadalajara and Tonalá and Jalisco; in Cuautlancingo, San Pedro Cholula, San Andrés Cholula and Puebla; and in Corregidora, Querétaro and El Marqués.
This resulted after a purchase and sale of assets of Axtel in favor of Megacable.
The IFT Investigative Authority suspected since January 2020 that the sale of these assets, between 1,370 kilometers of fiber optic network and last-mile infrastructure and 55,000 video clients worth 1,150 million pesos, would end in Megacable would become an agent with too much market in 16 relevant markets of the Republic, particularly in the restricted television business.
On average, revealed the IFT, Megacable reached a 51% stake in the PayTV of 16 markets studied and in 14 of them, it became the first actor, well ahead of total play, Dish or Izzi Telecom and Sky.
Enrique Yamuni, however, said that the IFT resolution will be fought and overturned in court or in the worst case scenario, Megacable will abide by the final result:
“We hope that this will be revoked. First, because it was made by an opinion that was more than two years old and it was made in a very different environment than the one we have now. We don’t think there is substantial power. What we bought from Axtel was really very little and did not represent large numbers of users and we did not drastically increase participation. That is going to happen, but if it doesn’t happen, we will have to do what they are asking us to do, which is accounting separation and some operating rules that we have to comply with, but I think it will be reversed. We already presented the arguments”.