4 Oct 2011Mexico Broadband Overview

The Mexican telecommunications industry is developing rapidly and has enormous growth potential. At the beginning of the 1990s, Mexico started the process of liberalising the telecommunications market. The first step, in 1990, was the privatisation of the state-owned incumbent, Teléfonos de Mexico (Telmex). In 1996, the Mexican regulator started operations.

Following its privatisation, Telmex received the concessions to provide voice, data, text and multimedia services until 2026. Long-distance and international services were opened to competition in 1997 and local services in 1998. Despite liberalisation, in mid-2011 Telmex still dominated the fixed market and Mexico remains the last country in the OECD to unbundle its local loop. For this reason, ISPs offering Internet services over DSL were slow in grabbing broadband market shares from Telmex. In contrast, cable operators which offer broadband services over their own infrastructure saw their broadband market share solidly increase since market liberalisation.