At the end of 2021, Altán Redes managed to connect five million users, but this figure is below the objective that the company foresaw, since it estimated to cover 19 million people.
“There is no doubt that the Red Compartida is underutilized and has not fulfilled its social objective, which is to close the digital divide, making the origin of the claim of the sector in relation to the use of the 700 MHz band more evident, when its development could have been more efficient if the existing telecommunications operators in the market had been taken into account, prior to the award of the project to Altán”, asserts the Union in the document.
The delay in the deployment of the Red Compartida was already registered by the Agency for the Promotion of Investments in Telecommunications (Promtel), a government entity coordinated by the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport (SICT) in charge of leasing Altán the rights of use of 90 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band and supervise its deployment.
According to a report from the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF), since January 2020 Promtel assured that Altán did not have the advances in coverage that are established in its agreement contract. March was the month of all 2020 that Altán Redes met the established goal.
Promtel has currently claimed from the company directed by Salvador Álvarez the payment of approximately 1,114 million pesos for the breach of obligations.
According to the union, the extension that the IFT granted to Altán Redes will affect CFE Telecomunicaciones and Internet para Todos, which rely operationally on the Red Compartida, in order to reduce the digital divide, generating uncertainty and delay in investments in the sector and also evidencing the lack of a federal digital policy.
“The non-compliance with the parameters established for the Red Compartida is part of a lost stage in connectivity and digital transformation, which means a breach of the objectives set by the Telecommunications Reform of 2013, widening the digital gap that currently exists in the country. The Altán project was poorly designed and consequently failed, more than a real contribution to the comprehensive transformation that Mexico needs,” the union said in the document.