The decrease in internet access points is associated with the current administration’s position to not giving continuity to programs from previous six-year periodsand, instead, abandon them or terminate the contracts.
Mexico Connected it’s an example. In the first year of López Obrador’s administration, the federal government reduced internet access because service contracts had ended, as reported by the president himself at the time. Currently, the program of the last six-year term was abandoned.
Another example was the cessation of programs such as Critical and High Performance Networks and Aula @prende, also from the Peña Nieto administration, which led to a 92.7% decrease in connected public sites in 2020, going from 17,712 to 1,297, according to the report of the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) made to the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation.
“During the months of July to October 2020, the number of sites [públicos conectados] operating and monitored by the SCT began to decrease, which was caused by the early termination of the contracts,” said the ASF.
Wi-Fi points have become one of the main options for users who do not have a telephone or mobile data planalthough they may represent a threat to your personal data.
As the connectivity projects of the previous administration ended, the government promoted its own: CFE Telecommunications and Internet for All. Born in 2019, the program has advanced without the advice of experts or the telecommunications companies themselves, which have even recognized how complex and expensive it is to bring the internet to places that are difficult to access.
After almost four years of existence, the state connectivity company has only recently provided information on its progress in dribs and drabs, although still without making clear the impact it has had on users.
The federal president assures that he has managed to meet the objective of installing the 12,600 towers that he had budgeted since last year, with the purpose of providing coverage to 118 million people at the end of his mandate. In this way, the CFE Telecom project has managed to connect 111,548 communities, although no details were provided about their location or the exact number of users reached, significantly approaching its coverage goal.
For this year alone, CFE Telecom sought to enable more points to reach a total of 100,000, a figure that has already been in place since the beginning of the six-year term.
“This administration erased projects like México Conectado with a stroke of a pen, a plan from the previous administration that also did not meet its goal, but instead of using it, it opted to a public company and do everything from scratchwhich meant creating the infrastructure and network and that is why now it has not been enough to reach what the previous government did, much less the goal that CFE Telecom has,” laments Jorge Bravo, a telecommunications expert.
The analyst assures that even though the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is almost over, part of the goal that has been set could still be achieved, but this will depend on the synergy achieved with all the agencies in charge of connectivity. as Promtel, CFE and Altán Redes.
“CFE Telecom has a network for now, but what it needs is to connect the greatest number of people through these internet points and it will be able to increase them only if it begins to work together, and not separately, and even if it begins to market your telephone services faster,” he says.