exico
offers tremendous opportunities in the telecommunications market. Although
the country has one of the lowest telephone penetration rates in Latin
America, President Vicente Fox is driving forward a communications revolution
in the country with his e-Mexico project.
E-Mexico will stimulate the market, but
it will require a massive amount of foreign investment. Fixed-line penetration
rates are as low as
four per cent in the poorest states of Mexico, such as Oaxaca. The government
has set itself a target to achieve 30 per cent teledensity by 2010.
To bring President Fox’s e-Mexico project to fruition will require
teledensity to increase to 25 per cent overall and the number of households
with fixed-line access to the internet to increase from 36 per cent
to 52 per cent.
There should be huge growth over four to five years
The telecommunications market was opened
up to competition in 1997. Since then the sector has experienced record
growth, and the number of mobile telephone users overtook fixed-line
users three years ago.
Telmex, previously a monopoly, remains dominant in all segments of the
market. But the government has issued more than 30 new local and long-distance
licences and there is strong competition among the new players, each
aiming to capture a niche market. Marcatel,
for example, is rapidly expanding voice and data services to Mexico’s
major business markets.
Founded in 1996 through a joint venture
between RadioBeep, Westel and IXC (now Broadwing), the company is now
87 per cent owned by the Marcatel Group. It has invested more than
£48 million in developing a state-of-the-art infrastructure covering
both national and international communications, and has a 1,260 mile
fibre-optic network connecting Monterrey, where it is based, to Mexico
City, Leon and Guadalajara.
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About
a fifth of Marcatel’s customers are residential users, but General
Director Carlos Montemayor
says: “We are trying to go for the big corporations – everybody
is fighting for that market. But there are also great opportunities
to serve small and medium-sized businesses and residential customers.
To survive in this market, you have to provide a lot of different services.
So we are trying to convert from just a service company to a whole-telephone
service company. This includes more dedicated internet services, not
only to the big corporations, but also to smaller businesses, as well
as providing internet access for the community.”
One of Marcatel’s more specialised
services, for which the company has exclusive rights in Mexico, enables
businesses to use Marcatel’s infrastructure to broadcast special
events on secure dedicated lines. It is essentially a distribution service
which Mr Montemayor describes as “switching video for an adapted
target”. The service is provided through an alliance with Canadian
company Allevision and Mexican company Videonet. “We are going
to extend it to Venezuela, Colombia and other countries,” he says.
“We try to be as diverse as possible as a way to maintain our growth
and competitiveness. We use different voice services, we do international
toll-free services, free hosting and so on.”
Marcatel, which employs 600 people, has
16 customer service centres around the country and a 24-hour, 365-days-a-year
operator service. Its SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) transmission
system has a capacity of one million calls an hour.
Mr Montemayor says: “We see great opportunities in long-distance
services. There’s a need for more telecoms in this country. In
order to compete, a company has to have really good long-distance services,
as well as internet services, secure services and web hosting.
“There are great opportunities in
Mexico; there will be huge growth in the different telecoms sectors
over the next four to five years. The country is still under-developed,
but as incomes grow and people seek more entertainment services, the
market will also grow.
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