What is expected in telecommunications for 2021

Telecommunications and broadcasting will be relevant throughout 2021, within the same sector and with external repercussions due to new offers that would reach the market and job creation. In the year that he left, unusual and infamous for the 125,000 Mexicans who lost their lives to this day due to the pandemic, including media owners, these industries were sensitive to chopping up their spectrum to broadcast education nationwide and built more networks that facilitated remote work, a contribution that oxygenated the economy and in an effort to contain contagion by Covid.

Investments in these sectors complied with the deployment of infrastructure, despite consumer defaults on Internet or telephony service, as the consumer also ran out of constant income in the year of the new virus. The telecommunications industry invested 113,424 million pesos in physical infrastructure and non-tangible assets in 2019 and it will be around June 2021 when the data for 2020 is revealed, a year of depressed spirits and economy, as the Mexico GDP it would contract 9.97% in this exercise.

There may be no optimism in the plans of the leaders of the telecommunications and broadcasting Mexicans after a 2020 full of troubles and despair, because the workers of these industries were also on the front line against Covid and many of them died while laying down the network – only the sector giant reported 17 deaths in June from coronavirus -, but 2021 comes with spectrum tenders, concession renewals, greater opening of networks, construction of those on 5G, regulatory promises more attached to the reality of the market and there will be operators who will not be subject to higher bodies; Some will even leave in January with a bigger budget.

That is the good; and the good, bad and ugly is the idea of ​​creating a Renaut 2.0 and threatening OTTs with offering national content, often of zero quality.

This is part of what the telecommunications and broadcasting industries will experience in 2021, and hopeful yes, that there will be a greater sensitivity of the government regarding the elimination of paperwork and frequency pricing. The election of the president for the regulatory body and a new commissioner for its board of directors is the other story to follow. Also topics, such as hearings, which will be discussed again in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) after four years.

More commercial radio and more support for public broadcasting

In 2021, 319 frequencies for new AM / FM radio stations will compete, through the Tender IFT-8. The process would start in the second quarter of 2021 and the objective, according to the sector regulator, is to expand plurality and competition in the market, although local and regional voices from the same commercial radio industry have requested not to tender more frequencies due to an alleged exhaustion of favorable conditions in very particular places in the country.

Several of the large broadcasting groups will continue with extension processes or will initiate concession renewal procedures; some frequencies of Radio Branch O ACIR, as an example; and among the public radio is the case of the government of Nuevo León.

In commercial radio the push and pull of the Prisa-Coral case will also continue due to the future of the chain Radiopolis. Besides, it remains to be seen how the sale of assets in 2020 impacted Radio Centro’s audience and income and if MVS’s entry into its market reserve with its group network also affected that group’s star station.

For public radio, another would be the scenario, after two difficult years for this area of ​​broadcasting. Starting with the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (Imer), this organization will begin in 2021 as a decentralized broadcaster of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), translated as that from now on that entity will have greater autonomy and decision-making power over the management of its budgets and editorial line.

Radio Educación, the other medium affected by the cuts in 2019 and 2020, will know in 2021 if the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) allows you to retain the 1060 AM frequency in Mexico City, since you are obliged to return the frequency after obtaining an FM, but being that a historical signal and that it is difficult to operate an amplitude modulated station here, there are chances that the station will retain the spectrum for another time. Radio Educación will also seek in that year to double its FM transmission power, up to 6,000 watts to radiate to the entire Mexico’s valley.

In 2020, Radio Educación reached 2.7 million users on digital platforms. In its traditional operation, the audience grew and that is why it trusts that it will find support from the public when it launches its frequency in Morelia during 2021.

Broadcasting is also television. There, the year 2021 arrives with good news for the Public Broadcasting System of the Mexican State (SPR), which after a budget of more than 1,000 million pesos to exercise, will seek to expand its coverage from coast to coast, until reaching 50 % of national coverage with its pilot, Channel 14.

In 2021 it will reveal if the IFT validates the requests of organizations that urged it to open a frequency for social and / or community use of digital television in Mexico City, since in 2020 it received 12 requests of this type, as revealed by the portal specialized in Mexican radio, En Frequency.

On the road that links radio broadcasting with telecommunications is MVS Comunicaciones. This group has a concession to operate a pay television channel in CDMX, but it won a legal recourse to set up an open television space for that signal. The channel’s concession expired in November and it remains to be seen if MVS agrees to pay around 500 million pesos to renew the corresponding authorization to operate the frequency, but in open signal and for another twenty years.

Telecommunications: the arrival of 5G in Mexico

2020 began with the news that Telefónica Movistar began a series of band returns and this will continue in 2021. The company will continue to return spectrum in the 1.9 and 2.5 GHz and 800 MHz bands.

It is not known if in 2021 Telefónica Movistar It will go through bands for 5G services, such as those on 600 MHz and 3.5 GHz, which the IFT will take to tender in the middle of the year, the first auction in Mexico on the matter, after the other tender to put on the market begins 41 batches of different sizes and band coverage that nobody wanted in past processes.

Regarding these processes, the position of the IFT regulator will be known during the year to deliver the frequencies to the concessionaires under other exploitation criteria, such as those of exploitation in exchange for the coverage obligation or attached to the income of the operator requesting the bands in some certain cell region.

It will also be defined if the Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT) has already returned a piece of the 3.4 GHz band to be reused in the market for fifth generation services.

In regulatory matters, the regulatory authority will decide what follows for Grupo Televisa in terms of determining that it is an agent with substantial market power in 35 relevant markets, after a concentration of assets that came from Axtel in a 2018 purchase.

That year, 2021, the functionality of the new regulations imposed on Telmex and Telcel to balance the markets and ranging from the cell phone operator must deliver separate contracts for services and equipment to the consumer, until the wholesaler Telefonos de México must bear the costs involved in conditioning the links through which third parties are plugged into their network companies that request it.

It is also possible that in 2021 the issue of ClaroTV, a subsidiary of America Movil (AMX), which requested an access to market video services in Mexico. Perhaps the $ 350 million that AMX promised as an initial investment in that market in exchange for access, will make noise in the heads of regulators in a year in need of investment.

2021 will be an important year for AT&TIt will be known if that is the year in which it will achieve the financial profitability that it could not in 2020 due to the pandemic and a quota of 20 million consumers will be reached. And AT&T and Movistar will be clearer if this year they are on track to obtain the 200 million dollars in savings from their infrastructure sharing agreement.

Additionally, 2021 is the year in which the Red Compartida of Altán Redes will also know how much it takes to be profitable.

Among the others pending to be known in that year, are those stories regarding the differences between the IFT and the Federal Competition Commission (Cofece) for regulating what of digital markets. Apart is the case of the effect Telcel club who got stranded in the SCJN this year. How the actions that the United States undertakes against the Internet giants to guarantee balance and competition in that world affect Mexico will also be important here.

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