They say that whoever learns to drive in Mexico City can drive anywhere in the world.
The same could be said about doing business in the telecommunications sector.
With a Mexican market dominated for decades by a dominant player (such as América Móvil), with operating costs out of range with other countries in the region (such as the radio spectrum) and with little regulation, having black numbers is a feat worth double.
Yesterday, at the AT&T headquarters in Dallas, Mónica Aspe demonstrated that there can always be ways to grow despite obstacles and excess concentration in a market. The Mexican CEO presented one of the best quarters in years: a 20% growth in its income versus 2023, 35 million extra pesos in Ebitda and a 27.7% increase in equipment sales.
One of the most interesting points is that the company added more postpaid clients than Telcel in this first quarter of the year: 116 thousand versus 105 thousand reported by Slim’s company in the same period.
Reviewing the official document, in the first Q of the year the telecommunications company reported operating income of 3 million dollars (million dollars) in our country, reversing the operational losses of 30 million dollars in the same period of 2023.
One of the ‘outside the box’ initiatives was to look for a blue ocean in a space with less competition (due to price) such as its new AT&T Premium service, where the fight with the competition is for service and not for rates. “We closed the first quarter of 2024 with growth in customers, revenue and profitability. We reached 22.5 million customers,” said Aspe, who found creative options to give value to his company even in an environment where a single operator – such as Telmex/Telcel – holds 73% of the country’s telecommunications revenues. One of them was to take advantage of this adverse situation in its favor and when Telefónica Movistar decided at the end of 2019 to return to the Mexican state the expensive spectrum it had won to be able to operate, it offered to provide them with mobile phone service from its own network. The complete digital migration of all Movistar customers to AT&T was completed in July 2022 and also allowed the Spanish company to have better financial results in the market that most distorts its global results.
The logic behind this alliance in the two operators was to consider the infrastructure as a commodity and focusing each company on savings or extra income to create attractive offers and increase its quality for customers. This network sharing model was so interesting that Telefónica has replicated it in other highly concentrated markets such as Colombia.
AT&T is consolidating with its 22.5 million customers as the second operator in the Mexican mobile market by revenue volume, surpassing Telefónica Movistar, which occupied that place for nearly 23 years. However, Telcel continues to be almost three times its main competitor, adding 83.9 million customers in the first quarter of the year.
Without a doubt, when the rules do not change, when monopolies are immovable, growth is almost a chimera. As well as driving fluidly through the Mexican capital.
