Mexico looks to bolster MVNO segment to spur market competition

Mexican telecom authorities aim to further develop the MVNO segment to spur stronger competition in the mobile market.

This week sector regulator IFT inked a collaboration agreement with Amomvac, which is the entity representing the country’s main MVNOs.

“Joint actions will be taken to develop this market segment in favor of competition in mobile services, and thus for the benefit of users,” IFT said about the initiative.

Among the activities planned by IFT and Amomvac are the sharing of statistics and market data, human resources training, and joint telecoms studies.

The MVNO market in Mexico is relatively well-developed compared to economies of similar size, such as Brazil, especially after IFT created a specific framework for the segment.

In total, Mexico has over 100 registered MVNOs.

They represent 12% of the mobile phone market and 14% of the segment for mobile internet. In Brazil, the mobile phone market share is less than 2%. 

At the end of March, América Móvil’s Telcel had around 58% of the Mexican mobile phone market, followed by Movistar and AT&T, each with around 15%.

The country's biggest MVNO is the one belonging to Grupo Walmart, with 13.3 million accesses at end-March, or some 9% of the total. Next comes Freedom (2mn accesses) and Grupo Salinas’ Oui (835,497).

Other MVNOs include Megacable-MCM, Newww, Diri Móvil, Rocketel, Weex, Redphone and Telmóvil, all with less than 500,000 accesses.