Introduction
A new telecommunications law in Mexico, proposed by President Sheinbaum, has raised concerns over its potential to concentrate power and undermine competition. The proposed Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications (ATDT) would have extensive regulatory powers, moving from an autonomous regulator to a near-omnipotent agency under the executive branch’s control.
The ATDT: A New Digital Leviathan
The ATDT will have significant responsibilities, including formulating telecommunications and broadcasting policies, regulating the radioelectric spectrum, orbital resources, and satellites, setting concession countervalues, overseeing infrastructure deployment and access, ensuring internet access in government installations and public sites, deciding on cable subterranean matters, and establishing social coverage policies and audience rights.
From Autonomous Regulator to Executive Subordinate
Unlike the previous Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), which was a constitutionally autonomous body with technical independence, specialization, and collegiate deliberation, the ATDT will be a subordinate entity of the executive branch. This change means that all decisions will be made by a single individual, José Antonio Peña Merino, shifting from a technical regulator to an administrative body that will centralize policy design, regulation, and collaboration with a government that also operates telecommunications services.
Neutrality Competitiveness Destroyed
The new law eliminates competitive neutrality. State-owned operators (CFE Telecom and Altán Redes) can receive commercial spectrum concessions without payment, while their internet service provision won’t constitute a monopoly. They can serve end-users, exempt from the economic competition regime that applies to operators paying high spectrum prices, receiving no subsidies, and adhering to all regulations, including asymmetrical ones.
State Entities’ Social Function vs. Market Competition
While the state can operate public entities, these should serve a social function, deploy networks in underserved areas, and provide telecom services to communities lacking connectivity. Their goal is universal digital inclusion. However, their mission shouldn’t be competing in markets with existing networks, services, and competition among operators.
Blocking Digital Platforms: A Contradiction
If the ATDT’s role is to materialize the right of access to ICT and the internet, enabling other fundamental rights, designing social coverage policies, ensuring public site internet access, closing the digital divide, and digitizing government services, it’s contradictory for the agency to have the power to block digital platforms.
Digital Platforms: Enablers of Fundamental Rights
Internet platforms provide benefits to countless users, enabling rights such as mobility, freedom of expression, cultural and educational access, healthcare, and digital financial inclusion. Blocking these platforms, even temporarily, infringes on fundamental rights and restricts widely-used services that the state has failed to provide efficiently.
Spectrum Prices: A Burden on Digital Inclusion
Mexico has some of the highest and most burdensome spectrum prices in Latin America. Neither the Secretariat of Finance nor the Federal Congress—which rushes to approve the new telecom law, assuming legislators’ technical expertise—has sought to reduce these costs in the Federal Rights Law.
Access Dynamic and Shared Spectrum: A Band-Aid Solution
The new law offers “dynamic and shared spectrum access” as a remedy, implying that the government won’t lower spectrum prices. Instead, it encourages operators to generate more business with their frequencies. State operators receive the spectrum for free, while the real solution lies in drastically reducing radioelectric spectrum prices to foster genuine digital transformation.
Key Questions and Answers
- What is the main concern with the new telecom law? The law concentrates regulatory power in a single individual, undermining competition and neutrality, potentially infringing on users’ rights.
- What are the ATDT’s primary responsibilities? The ATDT will formulate telecom policies, regulate spectrum and satellites, set concession values, oversee infrastructure, ensure public internet access, decide on cable subterranean matters, and establish social coverage policies.
- How does the new law affect competition? The law eliminates competitive neutrality, allowing state operators to receive spectrum concessions without payment while exempting them from the economic competition regime.
- What is the issue with spectrum prices in Mexico? Mexico has some of the highest spectrum prices in Latin America, hindering digital inclusion and stifling investment, deployment, access to broadband, connectivity, and digitalization.
- What are the potential consequences of blocking digital platforms? Blocking platforms infringes on fundamental rights like freedom of expression and mobility, restricts widely-used services, and fails to provide efficient alternatives by the state.
