Business News Americas | January 10, 2011 | Patrick Nixon
Mexico’s newly appointed communications and transport minister, Dionisio Perez-Jacome, will face the task of strengthening policy in the highly politicized telecoms sector, while outgoing Juan Molinar Horcasitas can look back on achievements that include a spectrum auction and reforming telecoms regulator Cofetel.
President Felipe Calderon announced on Friday (Jan 7) that Molinar Horcasitas would step down as minister to dedicate his efforts to political party activities in the run-up to the presidential elections in mid-2012.
Looking back on his tenure heading communications and transport ministry SCT, Molinar Horcasitas can point to several positive achievements.
He oversaw two auction processes – one for a concession to operate 20,000km of dark fiber pertaining to state power firm CFE awarded in June 2010, and another for mobile spectrum in the 1.7GHz, 1.9GHz and 2.1GHz bands awarded in July and August.
The latter had a significant impact on the market, allowing Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) to double its spectrum holdings and giving Nextel a 3G license.
Awarding mobile spectrum got the ball rolling for further auctions. In November, Cofetel launched a public consultation on the use of the 700 MHz, 1.7/2.1 GHz and 3.4-3.7 GHz bands.
In December, the SCT awarded to Boeing Defense (NYSE: BA) a contract to build three satellites worth 12.9bn pesos (US$1.04bn) to be used for national security purposes, as well as for general communications coverage in isolated areas.
Under Molinar Horcasitas, the government also set 2015 as the goal for switching off analog and switching on digital TV.
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