April will bring telecom changes

Monday, 10 March 2014

THE NEWS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Thenews.com.mx

Most of the 188 measures that the Federal Telecommunications Institute (Ifetel) has imposed on América Móvil and Grupo Televisa will take effect in April, according to the regulating body’s president.

“A 30-day waiting period applies to almost all of the resolutions,” Gabriel Contreras, president of Ifetel, as the agency is known, said Sunday, according to the news agency Notimex.

The key finding by Ifetel, made last Friday, is that both Televisa, the nation’s most-watched television network, and América Móvil, Carlos Slim’s telecom company, are “preponderant” in the market. That finding gives authorities the right to impose restrictions on the two as part of an effort to open up room more competition in the Mexican telephone and television sectors.

In addition, regulators approved plans to open bidding for two new nationwide TV channels, to foment more competition in an industry where the Televisa network holds about 70 percent of non-cable viewership. Televisa bills itself as the largest media outlet in the Spanish-speaking world.

Ifetel said it is working on the bidding guidelines for the new networks. Currently, Televisa’s only broadcast TV competitors are several government educational channels and the smaller TV Azteca, a former government network privatized in the 1990s.

Paradoxically for a move aimed at ending market concentration, the decision could open the way for Slim to get into television, according to a report by The Associated Press. Slim’s América Móvil company controls about a 70 percent market share in cellular telephones and 80 percent of land lines, but has yet to establish a presence in television.

The restrictions could change the media playing field significantly.

Televisa said the regulators’ decision requires it to “make its broadcasting infrastructure available to third parties on a non-discriminatory and non-exclusive basis.”

Regulators said Televisa will be barred from buying exclusive rights to broadcast “programs with unique characteristics that in the past have delivered large audiences on a national or regional basis, such as professional soccer league playoffs, Mexican national team matches, FIFA World Cup finals and the Olympic Games,” according to the Televisa statement.

Slim’s Grupo Carso said in a statement to the Mexican stock exchange that authorities have informed them that America Móvil will have to share its infrastructure and stop charging roaming for national calls.

Rogelio Bustamante, a telecommunication expert at the Technological University of Monterrey (ITESM), told The Associated Press that “there is going to be a change in telecom contents and services in Mexico” as a result of the new rules. “We are entering a new phase of more competition.”

Televisa said it was still studying the regulatory decision, which was more than 600-pages long.

The company will have to publish its advertising rates, which have been confidential and highly variable.

Agustín Ramírez, president of the nonprofit Mexican Association for the Right to Information, called the new rules “an important step in regulating highly concentrated markets.”

“The other beneficiary here will obviously be advertising markets, he said. Those markets will “explode” because of new, transparent policies in selling ad time.

Televisa has been slammed by critics for churning out a decades-long stream of often smarmy soap operas that are nonetheless popular across the world.

That is not likely to change for the moment.

“Simply issuing bidding rules for new television channels, to create more competitors, will not automatically mean better content for audiences,” said Ramírez.