Mexican telecoms regulator Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (Ifetel) has announced that as part of its ‘Plan Nacional de Espectro Radioelectrico’, it will make available spectrum in the 2.5GHz band (2500MHz-2690MHz) from 2016. The watchdog took the decision after taking into account the recommendations of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Comision Interamericana de Telecomunicaciones (CITEL). In its press statement, Ifetel said: ‘This scheme has a sufficiently broad set of contiguous blocks of spectrum that allows the deployment of broadband technologies using the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD)-LTE or Time Division Duplex (TDD)-LTE methods’.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in June it was revealed that senior AT&T Inc executives had approached Ifetel with a request for a 50MHz block of frequencies in the 2.5GHz band. AT&T has a presence in Mexico via its newly acquired Iusacell and Nextel mobile units, and also stands to gain a 41.3% stake in pay-TV operator Sky Mexico via its ongoing takeover of international pay-TV giant DirecTV merger.
