AT&T is expected to invest around $US300 million in an operations center in Guadalajara as part of its drive to extend its high-speed, mobile Internet throughout Mexico.
The first stage of the project is expected to create 1,500 jobs, Jalisco Economic Promotion Secretary José Palacios Jiménez announced this week. The U.S. company decided to base its center of operations in Guadalajara because of the high quality of the city’s labor force and importance as a tech sector hub, he said.
Last June, AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson announced plans to invest approximately US$3 billion in addition to the US$4.4 billion AT&T invested earlier that year to acquire Iusacell and NEXTEL Mexico.
At the time, Stephenson said AT&T expected the first phase of its state-of-the-art, high-speed mobile network to be complete by the end of 2015 and cover 40 million Mexicans, about one-third of the population. By the end of 2016, AT&T expects its mobile Internet service will reach 75 million people, nearly two-thirds of the population. AT&T plans to reach 100 million people by year-end 2018.
Stephenson lauded the telecommunications reforms introduced by President Peña Nieto designed to create more competition in the sector.
Despite the reforms passed two years ago, Carlos Slim’s America Movil (Telcel) still has a 70 percent share of the wireless market, with AT&T languishing in third place withy 8.5 percent.
This week, Bloomberg News quoted Thaddeus Arroyo, AT&T’s most senior executive in Mexico, as saying: “Two years into regulatory reform the preponderant agent has more customers than when they started … The real question – and it’s for the regulator to determine – what additional conditions are needed to drive change faster?”
AT&T’s wireless base in Mexico climbed 7.3 percent, or by 593,000 subscribers, to 8.7 million from the third quarter, Bloomberg reported this week.
To learn more about AT&T’s mobile service offered in Mexico, visit www.att.com.mx.