Mexican consortium ALTAN Redes has confirmed that ‘Red Compartida’, the country’s 700MHz 4G wholesale network, has gone live slightly ahead of schedule, covering 32.2% of the population. Locations covered by the infrastructure from launch include parts of Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Toluca, Queretaro, Puebla, Morelia, Colima, Tepic, Aguascalientes and Celaya.
The wholesale network – which has exclusive access to a 90MHz block of spectrum in the 700MHz band – was scheduled to be operational no later than 31 March 2018, by which date it was obliged to cover at least 30% of the country’s population. Going forward, the network must cover 50% of the population by 2020, and 92.2% of the population by 2024.
In November 2016 the Secretariat of Communications and Transport (Secretario de Comunicaciones y Transportes, SCT), selected ALTAN Redes – a consortium including Axtel, Megacable, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Dutch and Chinese investors – as the winner of the wholesale network tender. ALTAN was left as the only eligible bidder after its sole competitor, New York-based Rivada Networks, was disqualified for failing to meet the necessary financial obligations to compete.