The Mexican Transport & Communications Ministry (SCT) appears to have driven the last nail in the coffin of mobile operator Iusacell’s challenge to stop the award of a licence for 30MHz in the 1.7GHz band to the Nextel-Televisa JV. This follows months of…
The Mexican Transport & Communications Ministry (SCT) appears to have driven the last nail in the coffin of mobile operator Iusacell’s challenge to stop the award of a licence for 30MHz in the 1.7GHz band to the Nextel-Televisa JV. This follows months of legal wrangling by Iusacell that went all the way to the Mexican Congress.
On October 1, the SCT issued the licence, despite Iusacell winning an injunction the day before suspending the award until a full investigation into what Iusacell saw as an unfairly low price in the one-horse auction.
During a press conference on Saturday, attended by communications minister Juan Molinar Horcasitas, Nextel officials and legal representatives from both entities, Horcasitas said the license had been signed over given that there were no pending lawsuits preventing it from doing so at the time. Horcasitas is incidentally the power behind the Nextel-Televisa consortium.
That very issue is sure to cause some controversy in the ensuing week. SCT said on Thursday that a court lifted a suspension order preventing it from awarding the licences and it was during that “window” that it had signed them. However, local reports claimed that late on Friday (October 1) that another court had granted Iusacell another suspension order.
Neither Iusacell nor Nextel-Televisa was available for comment at the time of going to press.
