Red Compartida billed as IaaS

Altán Redes, the consortium that will develop and operate Mexico's wholesale network Red Compartida, will push the development of the country's telecom sector by providing network infrastructure as a service, according to its business development head José Ignacio del Barrio.

Speaking at the Mexico Connect 2017 event in the nation's capital, the executive cited data from Ericsson saying that global data consumption will grow eightfold in the following years due to an increasing number of connected devices.

The Altán executive added that Arpu is contracting in Mexico, but this will change as data consumption grows. "Voice has a penetration of 91% and data has a penetration of 61% in Mexico, while countries such as Chile are way above 100%. There is ample room for growth in this market," he said.

"Red Compartida's business model can be defined as network as a service," said del Barrio, adding that the wholesale network's objective is to accelerate the evolution of Mexico's telecom sector.

By leasing network capacity, Red Compartida's clients will benefit from economies of scale, flexibility, de-risking and saving in capex, he said.

Given the wholesale network's use of 90MHz in the 700MHz band, del Barrio said Red Compartida will provide "the best service quality at the lowest price."

He underscored the importance of having a network as an infrastructure service for cable operators, saying "it is time for convergent services in Mexico."

After his presentation, del Barrio told BNamericas that many players from different industries, including MVNOs, have expressed interest in Red Compartida's services. He is confident that the network as an infrastructure service business model will work once the wholesale network begins operations in March 2018.

MVNOs currently hold 1% of Mexico's mobile market, a small figure compared to 25% in Germany.