Slim May Face New Competitors in Mexico Telecom Reform Law

Lawmakers from Mexico’s three biggest parties plan to present a wide-ranging telecommunications bill that ends a longstanding limit on foreign investment, one of the proposal’s architects said. The legislation, to be backed by President Enrique Pena Nieto, also will define the way cable and satellite companies should work with broadcasters, said Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, an official with the opposition Democratic Revolution Party who has helped draft the bill.

In addition, it will provide regulators with greater recourse against providers that break the rules. The goal is to create more competition in the $30 billion- a-year Mexican communications industry, which is dominated by a handful of the country’s richest people. Smaller carriers that have struggled to compete against billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil (AMXL) SAB, for instance, could seek takeovers from non- Mexican companies for the first time.