Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones

The Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) concludes the revision of the concession titles in force and creates the public register of telecommunications and broadcasting services concessions

• The regulatory body complies with the mandates included in fractions V and VI of the eighth transitory article of the Telecommunication Constitutional Reform Decree
• The Concessions Public Register will be available for general consultation; it includes relevant information on 3 thousand 323 telecommunication and broadcasting concession titles
• As the result of the concession titles revision, the Institute will implement other actions, additionally to those included in the Constitution

During the ordinary session celebrated yesterday, the Plenary of the IFT received from the Supervision and Verification Unit, and the Radio and TV Systems Unit, the report about the revision of the telecommunications and broadcasting services concession titles in force, responding to the provisions of fraction V of the Eighth Transitory Article of the telecommunication constitutional Decree, published by the Federal Official Gazette in 11th June 2013.

The aforementioned eighth transitory article establishes a term of 180 natural days, starting from the IFT conformation date, for this regulatory body to review the concession titles in force and verify the proper compliance of its terms, conditions, and modalities.

To comply with this provision, several work teams of the aforementioned units were created in order to perform a detailed revision process of all the files integrated by concessionaries. The results are as follows:

• Revision of a universe of 3 thousand 323 telecommunications and broadcasting concession titles in force.
• As for telecommunications, there are 2 thousand 038 concession titles in force,
• As for broadcasting, there is a total of 1 thousand 610 radio and TV stations grouped in 1 thousand 285 concession titles.

As a result of this revision, the IFT was able to generate updated information of these files, which will allow to have the updated compliance status of the concession titles and integrate the reception and classification process of the documents as a structural part of supervising actions.

Once the revision of the concession titles was finished, some information requirements emerged for operators whose files were not complete. Once such requirements were met according to the legal terms, a diagnosis is issued to establish regulatory improvement and administrative simplification mechanisms; and in case of possible breaches, the administrative sanction procedures begin based on the processes established and respecting the audience pledge.

Public Register of Concessions of Telecommunications and Broadcasting Services

Likewise, the Institute Plenary received the report of the Industry Service Unit on the integration of the Concessions Public Register, which includes the complete information of in forced concessions related to telecommunications and broadcasting public services, and according to the provisions of fraction VI of the eighth transitory article of the Reform Decree, which states the obligation of the Institute to collect the necessary information to constitute such Register.

In order to comply with this mandate, the IFT reviewed the open files of the different concessionaires included in the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Technical Record, as well as the information delivered to this Institute by the Ministry of Communication and Transportation.

This process, which implied the revision of a total of 3 thousand 852 files of telecommunications and broadcasting concessions in-forced and expired, allowed the integration and updating of all the information of the current concessions presently servicing telecommunications and broadcasting markets.

This is how the Public Register of Concessions was established and a digital platform was also designed to enable on-line and free consultation of the information by the general public at the IFT website: www.ift.org.mx

The Register contains all the relevant information of telecomm and broadcasting concessions (name of the concessionaire the date the concession was issued and its expiration date, its scope and authorized services, as well as its frequency bands and orbital positions, if applicable, and/or associated satellite systems, among other data), as well as the images of the documents supporting the corresponding data.

To establish the Public Register of Concessions it was necessary to integrate the aforementioned information with approximately 14 thousand related documents, 56 thousand digitalized images of telecomm concessions and 70 thousand images of broadcasting concessions, all this will be available for the general public next March 9^th.