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América Móvil fights Mexican regulator over dominance determination

América Móvil filed an injunction against the resolution issued by Mexico’s Federal Telecommunications Institute (Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones or IFT) naming the telecom giant a dominant player in the Mexican telecom market.

The company serves about 70% of Mexico’s mobile-phone customers and was ordered by the IFT to cut some of its rates. The IFT resolution determined that an economic interest group comprised of América Móvil, Telmex, Telcel, Grupo Carso and Grupo Financiero Inbursa was a “preponderant economic agent” and according to América Móvil, the agency imposed “certain specific asymmetrical regulations.” 

  •  See this table to view the asymmetrical rates (expressed in Mexican Pesos) established for Telmex and Telcel services provided during the period of April 6 to Dec. 31, 2014. 

The Mexican congress has started discussions on a telecom bill presented by President Enrique Peña Nieto that establishes tough regulations for dominant players. According to a Bloomberg report, América Móvil said the proposed bill pushes back its plan to enter the pay-TV business and hurts competition in that industry by forcing it to wait at least 24 months to apply for a pay-TV license.

Also, Ernesto Piedras, director of the consulting firm CIU, told Convergencia Latina that the delay in enacting the Federal Telecommunications Act means a $44 million loss for the market, in terms of users that do not enter, over-rating and limited service penetration.

Telefónica IT integration: Telecom companies are undergoing a transformation to become more digital-centric, increase capacity demand, reduce time to market and improve customer experience, among other issues. It’s not an easy change due to the large number of legacy systems. During the TM Forum Latin America held in São Paulo, Brazil, last week, Telefónica Argentina CIO Horacio Goldenberg explained how the subsidiary is running an IT transformation focused on integrating systems from different operations, such as mobile, fixed, TV and broadband. Last year, in an interview with RCR Wireless News, Phil Jordan, CIO of the Telefónica group, described the current stage of the company’s Brazilian and Argentinian IT consolidation.

In Argentina, the telecom company is replacing legacy systems using a complete platform suite made up of software for customer relationship management, ordering, billing, collection, operating support systems, online customer experience channels and e-commerce. Currently, almost 10 million of 42 million customers have been migrated to the new platform, with the full process expected to be completed by next year. The challenge is huge, Goldenberg said in an interview with RCR Wireless News. For example, there were eight billing and four CRM systems. The goal is to deploy an end-to-end solution and to see the customers as unique, covering all services they use.

In total, Telefónica Argentina plans to invest $100 million for the transformation. They claim the amount corresponds to what they would have invested to keep the current systems running.

More news from Latin America:

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ABOUT AUTHOR

Roberta Prescott
Roberta Prescott
Editor, [email protected] Roberta Prescott is responsible for Latin America reporting news and analysis, interviewing key stakeholders. Roberta has worked as an IT and telecommunication journalist since March 2005, when she started as a reporter with InformationWeek Brasil magazine and its website IT Web. In July 2006, Prescott was promoted to be the editor-in-chief, and, beyond the magazine and website, was in charge for all ICT products, such as IT events and CIO awards. In mid-2010, she was promoted to the position of executive editor, with responsibility for all the editorial products and content of IT Mídia. Prescott has worked as a journalist since 1998 and has three journalism prizes. In 2009, she won, along with InformationWeek Brasil team, the press prize 11th Prêmio Imprensa Embratel. In 2008, she won the 7th Unisys Journalism Prize and in 2006 was the editor-in-chief when InformationWeek Brasil won the 20th media award Prêmio Veículos de Comunicação. She graduated in Journalism by the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, has done specialization in journalism at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain, 2003) and Master in Journalism at IICS – Universidad de Navarra (Brazil, 2010) and MBA – Executive Education at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.