The Mexican government promised this Wednesday to connect by 2024 the 20 million Mexicans who still live without internet through the public program “Internet for all” of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
It is a commitment that we made that at the end of our Administration, of our mandate, we are going to leave all the communities, all the municipalities of the country connected to the internet”,
declared the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his daily press conference.
The Government stated that, for now, the public company CFE altan It has a population covered with Internet networks of 91.48 million people, 72.6% of the population, and it is expected that this 2023 there will be coverage of more than 115.79 million inhabitants, 91.9%.
The president recalled that at the beginning of his administration, in December 2018, there were close to 500 municipalities that did not have a connection to the network.
Back then, CFE Altán only had 2,675 towers in 2018, but it has added 4,771 and by the end of 2024 it expects to have a total of 12,601.
According to a video shown by the general director of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett, the state electricity company can carry the internet with the transmission networks that it already uses for electricity.
The public company has 50,000 kilometers of fiber optics installed and will build 32,000 more kilometers, in addition to carrying out civil works to bring fiber optics to telecommunications towers, which can also be connected via satellite.
The technology available to users will be the 4.5 G network.
The CFE focuses on connecting communities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, arguing that private companies do not assist them because “it is not business.”
Bartlett considered it “unacceptable” and “injustice” that almost a sixth of the Mexican population remains disconnected.
“This would imply accepting that 20 million Mexicans are subjected to secular backwardness, to severe marginalization. It means that millions of children can be forever disadvantaged.”
commented the director of the CFE.
Although in his first year in office, in 2019, López Obrador promised universal coverage for 2021, he later postponed his goal to 2022 and has now promised that it will end in 2024.
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