Glimmer of hope for Mexican telecoms

When rumours spread recently that Mexico’s antitrust body would block a media group’s purchase of a 50 per-cent stake in a small telecoms operator, it seemed that the door had slammed shut on the country’s highly-concentrated telecoms market, which is dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim and his Telcel group. Last week though, that door edged open a little.

The Federal Competition Commission (Cofeco) denied Televisa’s $1.6bn acquisition of Iusacell, which has about 5 per cent of the mobile market. However, it did say that it might approve the deal on appeal if the two companies could provide solutions to several of its concerns. The ruling keeps alive the possibility of fostering more competition in Mexico’s $35bn a year telecoms sector, long considered bereft of powerful companies to take on 72-year-old Mr Slim, who dominates the industry with 70 per cent of the mobile market through Telcel. Movistar, owned by Spain’s Telefónica, is a distant second with about 20 per cent of the market.