The Mexican government has once again hatched plans to auction off the Federal Electricity Commission's (CFE) 25,000 km state-owned fiber network with hopes that a private service provider will use it to compete with the country's dominant telco, America Movil (NYSE: AMX) and increase broadband availability.
Jose Ignacio Peralta Sanchez, Mexican Communications Undersecretary, said in a statement that CFE's network will be transferred to Telecomunicaciones de Mexico, or Telecomm, which will then put it up for auction.
Specifically, this auction is designed to expand the fiber-optic network to cover 98 percent of Mexico's population.
This new initiative follows a previous attempt in 2010 to sell the state-owned fiber network infrastructure to build networks in areas that currently don't have access to broadband services.
At that time, Televisa was the only qualified bidder for two dark fiber strands being sold by CFE.
For more:
- Latin American Herald Tribune has this article
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