CIAO DATE: 04/06

Policy Reform in the Mexican Telecommunications Sector

Introduction

The importance of expanding and modernizing telecommunications services is increasingly evident to governments around the world as there is substantial agreement that the provision of these services endow countries with a crucial infrastructure to economic growth and development. In this context, during the late 1980s, the Mexican government implemented a reform to its telecommunications policy.

This document sets the issue of the Mexican telecommunications reform through a historical narrative of the development of the national telephone company Telmex. A general overview of the different regulatory episodes this sector has experienced will show that although there were different ownership and regulatory structures throughout the history of the telecommunications sector in Mexico, the common factor was a lack of incentives to thoroughly expand telecommunications services. The result was an undersupply of basic telecommunications services. Incentives were not present either in the form of regulatory oversights or through competitive pressures.

Full Text (PDF, 34 pages, 1.66 MB)