The Italian telecommunications company and electric cable producer, Prysmian Group , won in 2019 a tender carried out by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to supply more than 15,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables for the Smart Electric Network (REI) connectivity project. .
The purpose of the project , whose value amounted to 797 million pesos , was to build a telecommunications network through the cables supplied by Prysmian so that, with them, CFE or its subsidiary CFE Telecomunicaciones e Internet para Todos could bring the Internet to remote areas of the country. country as part of the objective of the current administration to close the digital divide.
The CFE subsidiary company was created in August 2019 as part of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s strategy to guarantee connectivity throughout the country, especially in remote areas where large telecommunications operators have not yet reached. But currently there are no details on the progress that CFE Telecomunicaciones has achieved in the deployment of infrastructure.
Expansión requested information via transparency from CFE Telecomunicaciones e Internet para Todos on the current situation of the optical fiber supplied by Prysmian Group, but the subsidiary of the state company could not provide information in this regard, because it denied having entered into a contract with the company.
In a second request via transparency, the CFE subsidiary argued that it did not find any document related to a contract signed with Prysmian, so it could not explain what has happened to the 15,000 kilometers of fiber optics that have been supplied since 2020 to this year.
Expansión also consulted the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and although the company did not deny having carried out the tender, the company did not elaborate on the whereabouts of the 15,000 kilometers of fiber optics that it obtained from the aforementioned company.
CFE Telecomunicaciones e Internet para Todos was operating without a general director for almost a year after the death of Raymundo Artís Espriú. On June 3, David Pantoja Meléndez arrived to lead the company.
Prysmian Group explained that the contract entered into with the CFE for the supply of fiber optic cables was concluded with the delivery of the material at the beginning of this year and acknowledged that it does not know what CFE and its subsidiary have done with the 15,000 kilometers of fiber optics. or if they have already started the deployment of cabling that they have supplied for two years.
Expansión has copies of documents that account for the fiber optic supply made by Prysmian to various reception points of the CFE, as well as the failure of the tender for the Smart Electricity Network (REI) connectivity project.
For Michel Hernández Tafoya, director of Observatel, the response of the subsidiary company of the CFE is “unusual”. “You have to account from the point of view of what the government has already spent,” he said. “That a state body that received 15,000 kilometers of fiber optics cannot identify them and tell us where they are seems very worrying to me,” he concluded. executive.
After the publication of this note, the CFE detailed in a statement that the Red Eléctrica Inteligente Fiber Optic Connectivity project is the responsibility of CFE Transmision, another of its subsidiaries, whose objective is to finance, install, maintain, manage, operate and expand the infrastructure necessary to provide the public service of electricity transmission.
Now, this subsidiary is also in charge of “acquiring goods associated with fiber optic cable to ensure communication between the equipment of the operational data network, unified communications and radio communication.” The state company assures in its statement that this activity is monitored “without the need to physically go to the places that it must supervise”, however, it did not give details on the use that has been given to the 15,000 kilometers of fiber optics.
