Mexico's Cofetel places wholesale regulations on Telmex

Cofetel, Mexico's telecom regulator, put forth new rules that will require Telmex to incorporate price and quality controls on wholesale services it sells to competitive service providers.

The agency said in a statement that the new regulations, which will go into effect in "the coming days" are designed to prevent dominant service providers like Telmex from "engaging in conduct that hurts the development of equal competition, or hurt consumers through the fixing of arbitrarily high prices in services offered."

Under the new rules, Telmex will have to deliver services to competitors with the same quality it would provide to its own subsidiaries and that service orders would be addressed "with punctuality."

In 2009, Cofetel ruled that both Telmex and Telcel, both of which are owned by parent company America Movil (NYSE: AMX), are Mexico's two dominant wireline and wireless service providers.  

Mony de Swaan, Cofetel's president, told Reuters that they plan to enact other rules in other areas where it argues that Telmex dominates.

Telmex would not comment on the new rules.

For more:
- Bloomberg has this article

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