GSMA THRIVE LATIN AMERICA: AT&T Mexico interim CEO Monica Aspe Bernal (pictured) backed the company to brush off regulatory issues and difficulty in accessing fibre to bring new services to market and grow its share.

Speaking in the event’s final keynote, Aspe Bernal echoed concerns raised by peers from across the region on a need for changes in regulation and reasonable spectrum prices to provide the basis for successful launches of 5G.

However she added the company was “not here to complain and whine, we are here to innovate and win in the market,” pointing to a fibre deal with Telefonica’s local unit signed in 2019 as an example of proactive moves it is making.

On its prospects of launching 5G in Mexico, the interim chief highlighted experience elsewhere placed the operator in good stead: “AT&T is a 5G leader nationwide in the US, we are constantly assessing market conditions and we will enable 5G in Mexico when such conditions are the appropriate ones.”

She added conditions currently hampering 5G in the market included issues around access to spectrum, fibre and site access to deploy compatible infrastructure.

“Mexican spectrum is consistently more expensive than in the rest of the world,” she added. “It’s not enough to have more spectrum made available, we need to assign costs allowing different operators to enable financial sustainable use cases for 5G.”

AT&T Mexico is the smallest of the nation’s three mobile operators with 18 million connections, GSMA Intelligence estimates for Q3 showed. Telefonica brand Movistar had 25 million and America Movil’s Telcel 68 million.