Removing all the netting that is currently woven into the poles to place it underground requires opening ducts, covering them, and paving, among other processes. This can take months and even years. And in that time consumers may be disconnected or experience intermittent network migration.
Another of the effects that the Institute of Telecommunications Law (IDET) warns about the rearrangement of wiring is the possible increase in the prices of connectivity services, because companies will seek to recover the investment that will imply burying their networks.
“Underground the infrastructure would cost almost 60% of the total investments destined to telecommunications in 2021,” warned Radamés Camargo, an analyst at The Ciu consultancy.
isolated projects
An initiative, proposed by the deputy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Tania Nanette Larios Pérez, seeks to reform the Organic Law of Mayors so that the works are developed by local authorities. Each municipality would be in charge of designing, implementing and managing the underground infrastructure.
“This model allows for the efficient and massive deployment of digital services in certain geographical areas –thus capitalizing on the existing infrastructure–, in addition to minimizing the investment and risk that telecommunications companies must carry out,” details the proposal of the PRI deputies. .
Javier Juárez Mojica, interim president of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT), said in September that he had sought rapprochement with the Congress of Mexico City to analyze alternatives for the rearrangement of wiring, due to the fact that the proposal of deputy Larios Pérez, It practically implies that telecommunications operators have to weave new networks in the city.
The telecommunications regulatory body calculates that, according to estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), carrying out a civil work such as burying cables can represent up to 68% of the total cost of an already installed network.
For Ernesto Piedras, director of The Ciu, the intention of the Mexico City government to put the telecommunications infrastructure underground has not been adequately analyzed by not considering the impacts that it will have mainly for users. For this reason, he says, it is necessary to work with the telecommunications operators so that an adequate rearrangement is designed without affecting consumers.
“International experiences for burying cables highlight that they have been through multi-stakeholder collaborations, for example, the company makes a plan for a certain number of years to move its infrastructure underground. But they have also been accompanied by tax incentives from the government and even international organizations such as the World Bank,” said Piedras.
Reorganization begins in Álvaro Obregón
Although the proposal of the deputy Larios Pérez has not yet been approved, the Álvaro Obregón mayor’s office has already taken the first step to rearrange the wiring.
The National Chamber of the Electronic, Telecommunications and Information Industry (Canieti), the National Telecommunications Association (Anatel) and the Álvaro Obregón mayor’s office signed an agreement on November 7 to begin the rearrangement of the wiring in said demarcation of Mexico City.
“The agreement establishes the bases for collaboration and coordination for the implementation of work for the ordering and cleaning of the public space occupied by the existing telecommunications infrastructure in Álvaro Obregón by the telecommunications service concessionaires.”
This will imply determining the polygons or specific areas to be intervened; the scheduling of the works; the coordination of joint routes and the removal of telecommunications cables without service and in disuse, prior identification of the cabling object of intervention; the rearrangement of cables; as well as the pruning of trees by the mayor’s office.
The agreement opens the possibility of inviting the Federal Telecommunications Institute, the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation, and the Federal Electricity Commission to join the work, when the situation so warrants, among others.