News
Mexico’s Supreme Court reportedly mulling rollback of rules that curbed telco’s dominance.
America Movil late on Wednesday attacked asymmetric regulations brought in to curb the Mexican telco’s dominance, claiming they led to a loss of business rights.
Reuters reports that lawyers for America Movil argued in a statement that the company’s rights to "cost recovery, economic stability and financial balance" were harmed by the rules. The representations come as the country’s Supreme Court considers rolling back some of the regulations.
In March 2014, Mexico’s telco watchdog, the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT), determined that America Movil’s fixed and mobile subsidiaries, Telmex and Telcel, constituted dominant entities.
It imposed several measures to curb their dominance, including asymmetric interconnection rates, rules governing infrastructure sharing and MVNO hosting, scrapping national roaming fees, and a ban on acquiring exclusive content rates.
Competition in Mexico’s mobile market has ramped up substantially since then though, thanks to the arrival of U.S. telco giant AT&T, which entered via the acquisitions of Iusacell and Nextel in 2015.
Nonetheless, the IFT has kept up the pressure on America Movil, ordering it in March this year to functionally separate its fixed-line retail and wholesale operations. It also ordered America Movil to adopt the principle of equivalence when it comes to the terms under which it provides services to MVNOs.
According to Reuters’ report on Wednesday, the Supreme Court has not said when it might rule on America Movil’s case.
