Mexico split the network from the service to break its telecom duopoly

Mexico's mobile market was dominated by América Móvil's Telcel, with high prices and patchy rural coverage. The 2013 constitutional telecom reform and its 2014 implementing laws ordered a structural answer: the state would tender a 'Red Compartida' — a shared, wholesale-only mobile network built on the 700 MHz digital dividend, with 90 MHz of spectrum in the 703–748 and 758–803 MHz segments set aside nationally.

The design keeps the wholesaler honest by construction. The tender's reference terms define the red compartida mayorista as a public network 'destinada exclusivamente' to commercializing wholesale services, and state that in no case may these networks offer services to end users. The operator cannot become a rival to its own customers; every mobile retailer — incumbent, new entrant, or state-backed — leases the same open-access capacity instead of each building its own network.

On November 17, 2016, the communications ministry (SCT) ruled the Altán consortium's economic offer solvent and awarded it the public-private partnership contract. Altán offered population coverage of 92.2% against the 85% minimum in the tender rules, committed at least 30% of project resources from its own capital, and had until January 27, 2017 to sign the PPP and constitute its operating company, with first commercial service due in March 2018 covering at least 30% of the population.

Sell capacity to retailers, never to users

Tower-and-spectrum scale fixed costs are what keep mobile markets concentrated; leasing wholesale capacity turns market entry into a reseller agreement.

Barring the network operator from retail makes neutrality structural — its only business is selling access, so discrimination against any customer is self-defeating.

Carving the concession out of fresh 700 MHz spectrum meant incumbents kept their networks but competition arrived in parallel, on better spectrum.

Coverage obligations tied the concession to rural reach: the winner offered 92.2% population coverage against an 85% floor set by the tender.

When incumbents own the infrastructure, don't just police prices — spin the infrastructure out as a neutral wholesaler everyone buys from. Keep monopoly's layer apart from competition's layer.

Altán signed the PPP within the January 2017 deadline and brought the network to its first commercial milestone — service covering at least 30% of the population from March 2018 — with deployment continuing toward the 92.2% coverage it had offered. The Red Compartida became the reference case for wholesale-only open-access networks: competition policy achieved by market structure rather than by policing an incumbent's behavior.