Challenge for the next administration: reform spectrum policy

“I would urge the government to look at spectrum and (control) its cost,” said Mats Granryd, CEO of leading telecoms industry group GSMA, noting that this would also increase coverage to more users.

Countries regulate and assign the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, assigning frequency bands to operators to avoid interference. In Mexico, spectrum is distributed in auctions and operators usually pay an initial fee in addition to an annual amount.

However, costs have become so high that “Mexico is probably the only country in the world where we had more spectrum in the past than in the present,” Lucas Gallitto, GSMA’s Latin America director, told Reuters.

As examples, Gallitto pointed out that the AT&T unit in Mexico returned part of the spectrum, as well as that Telefónica, the Spanish firm that operates the Movistar cellular service in the Latin American country, gave up all of its assigned spectrum to join the AT&T network.

The more spectrum operators have, the more network coverage they can offer customers, and vice versa, Granryd said.

Only half of Mexicans have access to 5G, the fastest type of network, a representative of Mexico’s telecommunications regulator, IFT, said at a conference.

The main barrier for operators in terms of costs is annual fees, the GSMA argued in a May report.

The current regulations have also hurt the government’s finances, Gallitto said. Last year, Mexico lost about 4,904 million pesos ($276.62 million) due to spectrum returns, according to the IFT.

An adviser to incoming President Sheinbaum said Wednesday that the new administration could implement a nationwide telecommunications policy, with a section to address how spectrum is auctioned.