News
Altan Redes divvies up country, backbone, core network between kit makers.
Huawei and Nokia have won deals to build Mexico’s national wholesale 4G network, Red Compartida, which is due to come online at the end of March 2018.
Huawei will be responsible for rolling out infrastructure in central and southern areas of the country, and building the backbone. Nokia will cover northern Mexico and take charge of building the core network, which includes the network operation centre (NOC) and security operation centre (SOC).
"With Huawei and Nokia as technology partners, I am convinced that Red Compartida will have unparalleled quality and reach," said Joaquín Coronado, managing director of Altan Redes, the consortium awarded a 20-year licence by Mexico’s Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) to deploy and operate the network.
Coronado said selecting equipment providers was a demanding process that took into account the technology, experience, roll out capacity and balance sheets of prospective partners.
"We are confident that our partners Huawei and Nokia will soon provide Mexico with the best mobile broadband 4G-LTE technology available worldwide," he said.
The announcement, made last week, comes around two months after Mexico kicked off the formal process of rolling out the infrastructure by signing a public-private partnership (PPP) agreement with Altan.
Building Red Compartida is expected to cost around $7 billion (€6.56 billion). Under the conditions of Altan’s licence, the network must cover 30% of Mexico’s population when it launches on 31 March next year.
When completed, Altan says the network will cover 92.2% of the population, surpassing the SCT’s ultimate coverage target of 85%.
