Summary

  • Mexico’s CRT is auctioning the right to provide capacity for intelligent industrial radio networks, not simply handing spectrum to each factory that wants a private network.
  • The final design divides up to 60 MHz into 216 initial region-block opportunities. Whether that creates real entry depends on qualification, financing, demand aggregation and the rules that constrain accumulation.

The 2.3 GHz tender now on Mexico’s calendar is framed as an industrial-connectivity project. Its legal structure points to a more consequential question: who will be allowed to turn the spectrum into a service that factories, mines, ports or energy sites can buy?

The Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones (CRT) calls the concession the “Service for the Provision of Capacity for Intelligent Radiocommunication Networks.” A successful concessionaire would hold spectrum rights for ten years and provide capacity to productive users. The offer is therefore a market layer between a public spectrum allocation and an industrial customer’s operating network. It is not a general-purpose grant that automatically lets every factory build and run its own network.

The final bases make up to 60 MHz available in the 2.3 GHz band: three 20 MHz TDD blocks, spanning 2340–2360, 2360–2380 and 2380–2400 MHz. In the first phase, those blocks are offered across 72 industrial regions, producing 216 region-block opportunities. A second phase may address remaining spectrum through regional polygons of interest, but only if spectrum remains and the participant meets the stated qualifications. That is an option in the design, not a promise that every proposed polygon will be served.

The architecture has a plausible logic. Smaller blocks and more regions can create more entry points than a single national licence. A capacity provider could aggregate demand from several industrial users and invest in a shared radio network instead of requiring each customer to assemble spectrum, equipment and operating expertise alone. The CRT lists manufacturing, logistics, mining, ports, energy, agroindustry and industrial parks as prospective uses. Automation, remote operation and real-time fault detection are objectives; none is yet a measured result of this tender.

The access question sits in the qualification rules. Before becoming a participant, an applicant must show legal, administrative, technical and economic capacity. Those screens can protect the integrity of a complex auction, but they also make capital, integration skills and operational readiness a condition of entry. A region may be a smaller lot on paper and still be beyond the reach of a new provider if the qualification burden or cost of serving several areas favours firms already operating at scale.

The public consultation altered the design rather than merely endorsing it. The CRT’s earlier proposal referred to up to 40 MHz and 10 MHz blocks. The final call expands the offer to 60 MHz, uses 20 MHz blocks and divides the largest regions further, from 60 to 72. It also removes the previous 200-square-kilometre limit for a polygon phase. Competition recommendations include one expression of interest per economic group and a national spectrum-accumulation cap rather than a band-specific restriction. These are meaningful design changes, but neither a cap nor a larger number of lots proves that independent capacity suppliers will emerge.

The regulator’s own decision record also captures a disagreement that the headline rollout language can obscure. The Pleno approved the general motion unanimously, while Commissioner Tania Villa Trápala dissented on regional segmentation and the lack of a permanent tender framework. That dissent does not establish a defect. It does identify a durable policy question: a single auction can allocate the first set of rights, but future industrial demand will still require rules for new regions, renewals, exits and oversight.

The sequence matters. The CRT announced an expression-of-interest window for 19–23 October 2026. That is an initial registration step, not the final offer deadline. A government project monitor lists 19 April 2027 as the start of the offer procedure. As of 18 October, there is no public result to report: no qualified bidder list, award pattern, price, customer contract or operating network.

So the scorecard should not stop at MHz allocated. It should ask who qualifies, how many economic groups proceed, whether bids reach multiple regions, how spectrum accumulation is measured across affiliates, and whether a capacity provider can secure customers without locking them into opaque terms. The first award will show who can enter; transparent reporting on service, access and concentration will show whether the market remains contestable after the auction.

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