Mexico's MVS to challenge government's spectrum recovery

Mexican communications company MVS Comunicaciones said Wednesday it plans to put up a legal fight against government plans to recover high-frequency spectrum that the company has been battling to keep for a mobile broadband venture.

The government said last week it won't renew expiring spectrum licenses in the 2.5-gigahertz band, and plans to recover existing concessions with the idea of auctioning the bandwidth for use in modern telecommunications services, such as fourth-generation mobile, as other countries are doing around the world.

The decision mostly affects MVS, which has been fighting to keep 190 megahertz of bandwidth in the 2.5 Ghz-2.69 Ghz range that were freed up when it swapped its pay-television operation to a new satellite TV service.

MVS Chief Executive Joaquin Vargas said at a press conference that the Communications and Transport Ministry took the decision to recover the spectrum while negotiations were still ongoing with the company, including a proposal under which the company would return 70 megahertz of its 190 Mhz in bandwidth."The decision was already taken and at the end of the day we were fooled," he said.

Mr. Vargas said government officials pressured the company on unrelated issues, using the renewal of its licenses as a bargaining tool, and also charged that the government sought to overcharge MVS for the use of the spectrum by setting fees as if it were for mobile telephony, which "any local or foreign investor" would reject.

In comments to reporters Wednesday, Communications and Transport Minister Dionisio Perez-Jacome denied there was any "blackmail" or conditioning on the part of the government. He reiterated that the bandwidth was being underutilized, and that the government was receiving inadequate payment for it.

"He [Mr. Vargas] was told that what he had to do was pay what the frequencies were worth," Mr. Perez-Jacome said.

Source: http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=475685

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