Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones

The IFT Plenary issues general guidelines for the authorization of additional services to broadcasting, telecommunications, and telephony concessionaires

• The Institute complies with the constitutional mandate of establishing general provisions so that concessionaires are authorized to offer additional services to the ones included in their current concession title
• The IFT will be able to set the requirements that broadcasting, telecommunications, and telephony concessionaires must meet to move to the sole concession model only when Congress issues the secondary legislation

In accordance with the provisions of Fourth Transitional Article of the Decree of constitutional reform in the telecommunications field, in extraordinary session, the Plenary of the Federal

Telecommunications Institute (Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones, IFT) approved, by means of agreement P/IFT/EXT/060514/102, the "General guidelines that establish the requirements, terms and conditions that the current concessionaires of broadcasting, telecommunications and telephony must comply in order to authorize them with additional services that are subject of their concession".

It is important to point out that at this time the Institute is only able to determine the requirements, terms and conditions which the current concessionaires who intend to request additional services to those authorized in the respective titles of concession must comply, given that to date it does not have the elements needed to define the requirements that broadcasting, telecommunications and telephony concessionaires must meet to move to the sole concession model due to the scope of such concessions being reserved to what the regulatory act determines which, in turn, will be issued by the Congress of the Union.

In this regard, the Guidelines approved today for the approval of additional services include the establishment of specific and general requirements applicable to all types of broadcasting, telecommunications and telephony services concessions, whether they are: (i) radio spectrum frequency bands concessions; (ii) public telecommunications networks concessionaires ; (iii) concessionaires with express prohibition or restriction to provide certain services, or, (iv) concessions whose holders have been declared as part of the interest groups that conform to preponderant economic agents, in accordance with the constitutional mandate.

The Guidelines that include the authorization which the Institute may issue with respect to requests for additional services will be without prejudice to the obligation to continue the provision of the services referred to in the concession in question.

These provisions will be published in the Official Gazette of the Federation in the next few days, for the purpose of their entry into force.