The company’s goal is to reach 12,601 towers to provide coverage to 118 million people at the end of López Obrador’s six-year term. At the moment High Networksa partner of the company and on which it relies to advance its plan to close the digital gap, has 7,446 towers that, added to those of CFE Telecom, would already have a total of 11,623.
According to a coverage map that CFE Telecomunicaciones shared with this medium, it is detailed that, of the 4,177 towers, 3,862 are still under construction, while 315 already operate. Most of this infrastructure is located in the center south of the country, regions to which the government has said it wants to bring connectivity services.
Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz are the entities with the least internet access in the country, according to ENDUTIH 2021, and the administration only has two years left to bring telecommunications services to those areas that are not yet connected.
“It cannot be accepted that more than 20 million of the Mexican population cannot access a technological instrument, today a fundamental right. Not doing so would imply accepting that these people are marginalized and means that children may be left at a disadvantage for living in areas where they are not considered profitable,” he said. Manuel Bartlettgeneral director of the CFE, on February 15 of this year in a conference with President López Obrador.
Six months after CFE Telecomunicaciones e Internet para Todos began to provide connectivity services, it already has 6,493 users, who belong to the prepaid modality, without specifying whether its subscribers actually live in remote areas, where there is still no other telecommunications operator that can offer connectivity services.
No clear security strategy
The installation of towers means going to places that are difficult to access and even where no telecommunications infrastructure yet.
To achieve the objective, the president indicated last year that he would require all the workers and operational force of the CFE. However, The insecurity that plagues the country has begun to be an obstacle for the deployment of networks, whose situation the telecommunications companies themselves have recognized and the state company will also face this problem.
Expansion consulted CFE Telecomunicaciones about the security strategy that it will implement to guarantee the safety of its workers, but the company replied that it does not have such information “because it is not within its competence.”
