China Telecommunications Corporation, the owner of China Telecom, is reviewing a potential investment in Mexico, a spokesperson for the company was quoted telling Reuters.
The newswire had earlier cited three people with knowledge of the matter as…
China Telecommunications Corporation, the owner of China Telecom, is reviewing a potential investment in Mexico, a spokesperson for the company was quoted telling Reuters.
The newswire had earlier cited three people with knowledge of the matter as saying that China Telecom, the country’s third-largest mobile operator, was looking to make a joint bid for the construction and management of Mexico’s US$10bn broadband network project, together with local partners.
China Telecom did not respond to a request for comment.
The company has reportedly already secured several billion dollars of financing from China Development Bank and other Chinese state-owned banks.
In October last year, Mexico’s telecoms regulator and the telecoms and transport ministry agreed on the terms and conditions for developing a state-owned mobile network by 2018.
Six telecoms equipment manufacturers carried out field studies for the public-private partnership, which is aimed at loosening America Movil’s grip on the country’s telecoms market.
These reportedly included telecoms equipment makers Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, which had submitted a joint unsolicited bidding proposal. However, according to the Reuters report, the ministry decided not accept the offer in order not to favour them in the bidding process, which is due to complete in August 2015.
Last November, Mexico’s communications and transport minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza discussed the shared network during a meeting with Chinese government officials, who expressed significant interest in the plan, according to a ministry statement.
The shared network will use at least 90 MHz of the spectrum released by the transition to digital terrestrial television, the fibre optic infrastructure of the Federal Electricity Commission and other state-owned assets.
Critics of the project have reportedly warned that the initiative could dissuade operators from investing in their own networks.
