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IFT to announce winner of tender to build shared LTE network in second half of November.
Mexico’s telecom regulator has once again pushed back the timetable governing its shared mobile network project, delaying its announcement of the results of the tender process by almost two months.
The Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT) will announce the winner of the shared network tender on 17 November, it revealed last week, on completion of what it termed the clarification phase of the project.
The regulator said it and the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) fielded close to 900 questions from interested parties. Prospective participants in the tender – which will see one company granted cheap access to spectrum in the 700-MHz band and a 20-year public private partnership to build out an LTE network that it will then rent to retail service providers – are still showing strong interest in the process, it said.
The participants have requested more time to get their financing plans in order, amongst other things, and therefore IFT has decided to extend the various deadlines in the tender process.
As a result, interested parties have until 20 October to submit their proposals, including technical details, to the IFT, with the results due to be published just under a month later.
The regulator had previously expected to draw the competition to a close on 28 September, although that date too came about as a result of a postponement from 24 August, again due to the number of queries raised by would-be tender participants.
The IFT said it will sign a contract with the winning bidder no later than 27 January 2017, or possibly earlier if the winner is able to meet the various requirements in time.
It was keen to point out that it was not only the potential network operators that sought to delay the process.
"It is important to note that these changes to the contest timetable were also requested by various national and international financial institutions interested in backing the shared network," the IFT said.
It added that the SCT’s financial adviser in the process, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, examined the changes to the timetable and considers them a positive development.
These changes will help maximise the competitive element of the contest, resulting in better offers from participants and thereby ensuring that the shared network will cover the largest possible percentage of the Mexican population, the IFT said.
