The ASF detected that the telecommunications regulatory body did not carry out the supervision of the Preponderant Economic Agents (AEP), América Móvil and Grupo Televisa, in addition to not complying with 12 of the 16 monitoring programs in the field of telecommunications and broadcasting.
“It scheduled to verify 73 asymmetric measures and 168 preponderance obligations, without proving their verification, and only reported four verification visits to the Preponderant Economic Agents, without it being possible to identify the preparation of the opinions of two verification visits”, warned the ASF.
The IFT designated América Móvil and Grupo Televisa as preponderant economic agents in 2014, but eight years after imposing measures with the aim of reducing the market share of both companies, it is still greater than 50% in the case of both.
Between 2017 and 2020, América Móvil’s market share only fell by just over two percentage points, which is why experts from the CiU consulting firm warn that it will take up to 20 years to achieve a balance in the sector’s market share. Grupo Televisa still holds more than 60% market share in the broadcasting sector and has not been regulated for more than two years.
The IFT explained that the breaches in the supervision and verification of América Móvil and Televisa were due to the suspension of deadlines caused by the health contingency caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus.
In relation to the supervision and verification of authorized dealers and other regulated subjects, the IFT carried out 360 supervisions in 2020, which meant a compliance of 51.9%, with respect to the 694 scheduled supervisions.
The ASF also reported that the IFT did not comply with its work programs on regulatory issues, since of the 16 projects it programmed, it concluded 4 (25.0%), 11 (68.8%) had progress from 25.1% to 94.1% and one ( 6.2%) was cancelled, because the document is under analysis to redefine the objectives, goals and benefits of the regulatory provision.
In addition, it programmed 11 projects of various provisions that were related to the updating of key performance indicators and the review of technical and operating parameters, of which five were concluded, while six presented advances of between 2.2% and 81.2%.
“The institute (IFT) did not meet the programmed goals, so there was a risk that 67% (77,093,757 million people) of the population aged 6 years or older (115,065,309 million users) who used, at least , some telecommunications or broadcasting service, did not have access to quality services, at affordable prices and the risk of widening the accessibility gaps to telecommunications and broadcasting services would materialize, ”says the Audit report.
The IFT told the auditors that the main reason why it did not comply with the regulatory work programs during 2020 was the health contingency caused by the pandemic.
