Telcel launches 5G services in 18 Mexican cities

Mobile operator Telcel (América Móvil) has enabled 5G mobile services in 18 Mexican cities that are home to a combined total of nearly 50mn people.

The announcement was made after regulator IFT authorized the firm to change 18 concession titles to use radio spectrum frequency bands in the 3,450-3,550MHz segment in order to offer 5G mobile services.

During the firm's presentation on Twitter, Carlos Slim Domit, chairman of the board of América Móvil, said that this was the "most important deployment of infrastructure [5G] in Latin America" and stressed that the expectation is that all Mexican cities will have access to 5G by the end of the year.

"In recent years we have expanded the transmission network, renewed systems and automated network operations, transferred applications to the cloud and taken the latest technology to base stations," said Daniel Hajj, CEO of América Móvil.

Last week, América Móvil claimed to have "everything ready to launch 5G" in most countries in the region.

The cities with initial 5G coverage include Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Tijuana and Querétaro.

"We will be densifying the cities covered and we will continue to invest to have more than 120 cities with 5G coverage by the end of the year," added Hajj.

The firm's total investments for this year were not disclosed. In its last results presentation, América Móvil stated that it would maintain investments of US$8bn for Latin America in 2022.

In Mexico, Telcel sells about 40 devices that support access to 5G technologies made by the brands Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, Nokia, Xiaomi, Oppo, ZTE, TCL and Honor.

Plans for 5G technologies will be available as from February 28. Telcel will offer plans for mobile services and fixed services for homes and offices.