Altan Redes, the Mexican public-private initiative that seeks to expand mobile communications coverage in remote areas of Mexico, has been granted an extension of its coverage target timescale.
The country’s telecoms regulator, the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), has said that Altan will now have until 24 January 2028 to meet its commitment to achieve coverage of 92.2% of the population.
The extension is, says IFT, because Altan currently faces what are described as material and economic impediments. The new timescale means that Altan, which is currently going through a commercial bankruptcy process, now has another four years to meet the coverage target. Altan was declared insolvent in November 2021, a process that allows it to continue operating while negotiating with its creditors.
IFT also gave Altan more time to cover at least 70% of the population. It should have done so this January. It now has until 20 November.
By 17 December last year, the Altan Shared Network reached 69.58% of the population with its 4.5G coverage, according to a company statement.
Altan's infrastructure allows MVNOs to offer their services directly to their clients and compete with other companies in the sector, such as America Movil or AT&T. According to the Bloomberg Linea news service, as of December, Altan had 112 clients offering services to five million end users.
However, as we reported last week, one Altan partner, Megacable, recently decided that, as well as running services on Altan, it would improve its service through an alliance with AT&T Mexico, which both has greater coverage and allows the customer to use an iPhone and other cellular models that are not approved for the Altan network.
