President Enrique Pena Nieto has signed off on Mexico’s new telecoms act which lays out the details of its broader changes to the industry last year.
The reforms are designed to spur competition in the mobile and fixed-line markets where America Movil…
President Enrique Pena Nieto has signed off on Mexico’s new telecoms act which lays out the details of its broader changes to the industry last year.
The reforms are designed to spur competition in the mobile and fixed-line markets where America Movil (AMX) dominates.
Commenting on the legislation, Pena Nieto said it would result in better coverage and an improvement in the quality of services, while lowering prices for consumers.
The reforms had their first significant impact last week when AMX decided to offload subscribers and infrastructure to meet the requirements of the new rules after they were approved by congress.
AMX will spin-off its passive infrastructure into a separate company which will then look to lease capacity to other operators. Meanwhile it will sell off an estimated 20 million mobile users to create a new nationwide operator and bring its market share down from 70% to 50%.
At the end of last week AMX’s billionaire owner Carlos Slim was quoted as saying that his company would look to dispose of an attractive cross-section of the company to entice a buyer and added that it would happen within six months.
Slim added that he would prefer to sell customers to a single company and expected the purchaser to be a well-capitalised player from abroad.
The Mexican incumbent’s stock has risen almost 12% since the announcement last week taking its market capitalisation to more than US$80bn.
