Altán stops placing infrastructure and 70% of its sales go to CFE TEIT

When Altán and the government reached the agreement, the CFE TEIT project began to gain strength with the announcement of the installation of 2,800 antennas in the country to connect 6.4 million Mexicans located in 18,634 towns that did not have access to the Internet. In addition to the installation of towers, according to data obtained via transparency by Expansión, 4,177 towers had been installed last year. with an investment of 6,146 million pesos.

Carlos Lerma, CEO of Altán, said on July 4 at the president’s morning press conference that he has 95.3% national coverage, with which more than 127,000 locations are covered with 4.5G technology. He even said that by the end of this year they would install 2,629 towers.

“But since last year it has become a reality that Altán Redes no longer deploys any infrastructure, it only uses what CFE TEIT provides. The company itself recently said that it has more than 94% of coverage, but that is not true, it only has 74%, the rest is from the infrastructure and access it has in agreement with other operators,” said a source with knowledge of the matter but who asked not to be named.

One of Altán’s obligations, within its concession, is to deploy infrastructure to meet coverage milestones stipulated by the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) and which are monitored by the Telecommunications Investment Promotion Agency (Promtel), so the lack of placement of sites could be a breach of its obligations.

However, Jorge Bravo, an analyst at Digital Policy Law, believes that although Altán has an obligation to achieve its coverage milestones, the company can use a collaborative model to avoid duplication of connectivity efforts and allow it to maintain financial health.

“The original Red Compartida model did not work, but the new Altán Redes is different because it has already been rescued by the government and the most important participation is public, so its alliance with CFT TEIT changes the conditions and there is no point in duplicating efforts, resources and infrastructure,” said the specialist.

The income goes to CFE TEIT

The agreement has allowed Altán to have better financial statements. In 2023, La Red Compartida billed 6,000 million pesos and by the end of this year it is estimated that it will double this amount, allowing it to achieve operational balance towards the first quarter of 2025, the source with knowledge of the matter revealed to this media.

The increase in revenue is due to a greater number of clients, such as Virtual Mobile Operators (MVNO), who have reached their operations, which are growing faster than the large telecommunications operators.

But the total sales that the company has begun to generate do not stop at its operations. The other part of the agreement stipulates that Altán must deliver 70% of its income to CFE TEIT so that it can continue to deploy infrastructure and thus avoid financial problems. This means that the CFE subsidiary would receive 8.4 billion pesos at the end of this year.

For Bravo, revenue sharing is the most important thing because any business model must be sustainable. Both CFE and Altán are public companies or with state participation, so the sales generated must contribute to closing the digital gap, acquiring radio spectrum or redesigning the financial strategy. “In any case, care must be taken to ensure that no financial damage or inefficient use of resources occurs,” said the analyst.

The plan for the next administration is to fully control Altán in order to continue with the project to close the digital gap, but it is not yet clear whether this change would mean that all income would go to the state or if the current scheme would be maintained.