Telecoms & IT
From The Report: Mexico 2017
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The Mexican telecoms sector is one of the largest and most dynamic in Latin America. The government’s telecoms and broadcasting reforms, introduced through new legislation and a constitutional amendment in June 2013, are widely seen as some of the most successful changes made by the administration of President Peña Nieto. One sign of this is the contribution of the telecoms sector to GDP, which increased to around 3.6% in 2016, up from 2.6% five years earlier. In addition to telecoms, Mexico’s ICT sector has been experiencing strong growth in recent years. ICT exports have accounted for around 10% of Mexican manufacturing exports. In 2014 the value of Mexican ICT exports was $62.4bn, ranking the country as the world’s fifth-largest ICT exporter, behind China, the US, South Korea and Japan. There is clearly major scope to increase technology market penetration in Mexico, particularly by increasing digital management systems across manufacturing industry and services where take-up has so far been limited. The fundamentals of the technology sector point to strong medium and long-term growth.

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Overview

Breaking down barriers: Recent legislation and a commitment to liberalisation has boosted growth in the telecoms sector
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The Mexican telecoms sector is one of the largest and most dynamic in Latin America. It is also undergoing a process of significant change. The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in late 2012 at the start of a six-year term, made reform of the telecoms industry one of its signature policies. In the three years since the reform process was initiated, there has been tangible evidence of movement towards some of the ultimate goals of the reform: to make the industry more competitive,…

Analysis

Theory of evolution: Demand for high-speed internet has spurred major changes and expansion in the domestic marketplace
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Mexico has been upgrading parts of its telecoms networks to the LTE standard that is also sometimes described as 4G; however, there can be minor differences between the two. The upgrade allows for the provision of faster and more extensive data services. According to consultancy Ovum and telecoms lobby 5G Americas, by mid-2016 there were 1.4bn LTE connections worldwide, representing 18.7% out of a total of 7.5bn cellular connections (mostly using early technologies such as 3G/WCDMA-HSPA). LTE’s…

Overview

Global outlook: Proximity to the US and a burgeoning tech sector have led to a thriving IT industry
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The Mexican ICT sector is well established. There is, however, some ambiguity over the statistical measurement of its size and performance. Using data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, one industry lobby, the Mexican Electronics Telecommunications and Information Technologies Industries Chamber (Cámara Nacional de la Industria Electrónica, de Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologías de la Información, Canieti), has estimated that in the 15 years leading to 2014 the industry as…