Large cell phone companies, such as Telcel, AT&T or Movistar, require a minimum of between 2,500 and 5,000 users to offer services. But places like Santa María Yaviche, with 600 inhabitants -according to the latest data available- do not represent an attractive market for the telephony and data giants.
“The operators have already said that even if they are given the spectrum, they will not be able to reach rural areas because the cost of capital for maintaining the network is very high,” says Adriana Labardini, former commissioner of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT).
The lack of telecommunications services in rural areas has brought to the table the need to create their own networks to have nearby and affordable services. Today Rhizomática, for example, serves around 4,000 users cell phone service in indigenous communities in at least four states of the country. All of them are both users and owners of each local community network.
But almost a decade after the successful implementation of a community telecommunications network in Santa María Yaviche, 3.2% of Mexicans still do not have cell phone equipment and close to 24.4% of the population still does not have access to the Internet in Mexico. , according to data from the 2021 National Survey on Availability and Use of Information Technology in Homes (ENDUTIH).
In order to close the digital divide in rural areas, it is necessary to promote these community network models, and for Labardini, an alternative is through spectrum sharing models, mainly in those regions where the large operators have recognized that carrying connectivity is unprofitable. .
The former official of the regulatory body explained, during the first Ibero-American Congress of Digital Law, that in certain rural areas there is a great underutilization of the spectrum, since some licensees are not using some bands and these can be used by small operators to access services of connectivity.
“New spectrum sharing systems must be implemented for secondary use (that is, to satisfy telecommunications needs without the purpose of providing commercial services), especially when there are licensees who have not used their frequencies for 20 years,” he said. Labardini.
In rural areas, some community operators have had to self-manage their connectivity, from training to service their networks, as well as creating their own content in their mother tongues.
“We need clear public policies that allow us to narrow the digital gaps between the urban and the rural. If we don’t do something, those languages and wisdom of the communities will be lost,” he concludes.