Summary

  • For a factory choosing a network, the useful questions are who can connect its equipment, when the service will be ready and who will fix it. Winning frequencies answers none of those questions on its own.
  • Mexico has widened the frequency blocks and split some large industrial regions. It also allows up to a year before the concession title is granted, giving providers time to turn an auction win into a service they can sell.

Would you plan a factory's new equipment around a network that exists only as a right to use frequencies? That is the distinction worth keeping in mind as Mexico offers spectrum for industrial connections. A winning bid can secure the radio resource. It cannot tell a buyer when installation will finish, whether existing equipment will work with the service or who will deal with a fault.

The decision published on 7 October by Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones, or CRT makes room for that unfinished work. Prospective concessionaires may defer receiving their title for up to a year for studies, tests, permits, infrastructure and customer-specific offers. This is preparation time built into the rules, not an extension granted after a missed deadline.

For a buyer, the option makes the promised delivery date worth examining. For a provider, it leaves room to assemble an offer before receiving the title. Neither side can treat the year as proof of demand, revenue or readiness. The documents describe an opportunity to build a business, not a customer waiting to sign.

Buy a connection, or build a network?

The tender concerns commercial capacity provision for intelligent radiocommunication networks, using ten-year spectrum concessions in the 2.3 GHz band. In practical terms, it opens a route for a provider to sell capacity to industrial and other productive users. It does not automatically give every factory its own frequencies and leave it to build a private network.

A provider could combine demand from several customers to support a network investment. That is a possible business model, not a result established by this tender. A factory considering the service would still need to know where it works, how it connects to existing equipment and when it can be accepted for use.

The auction's large headline number comes from a small multiplication. Three 20 MHz blocks, offered across 72 industrial regions, produce 216 region-block lots. The table on page 59 of the official gazette lists the ranges as 2340–2360, 2360–2380 and 2380–2400 MHz. There are not 216 separate frequency bands, nor does the table promise 216 competitors.

The proposed second phase is conditional too. Spectrum must remain after the first phase in regions containing polygons of interest, and participants must be eligible to acquire it. A proposed polygon also needs a favourable technical-feasibility opinion. Drawing a service area on a map does not reserve capacity for the customer inside it.

The blocks got wider; parts of the map got smaller

Consultation changed both the bandwidth and the geography. Total spectrum increased from 40 to 60 MHz, and individual blocks grew from 10 to 20 MHz. Separately, four of the largest industrial regions were subdivided, raising the total from 60 to 72. The earlier version of this article blurred those changes when it described smaller blocks as an opening for entrants.

CRT gives different reasons for the two adjustments. Wider blocks are intended to support capacity-intensive applications. Smaller geographical areas are intended to reduce the cost of entering the largest regions. Those explanations describe design choices. They do not establish that a provider can finance a deployment or find enough paying customers within its boundary.

The decision also removes the former 200-square-kilometre limit for polygons. On spectrum accumulation, it retains a national limit and removes the band-specific restriction. Comisión Nacional Antimonopolio asked for one expression of interest per economic-interest group, among other measures. A list of company names would therefore be a poor substitute for knowing how many independent groups actually compete.

Even before bidding, the process has several distinct steps. An expression of interest produces a unique registration reference. Payment and documentation follow, along with an assessment of legal, administrative, technical and economic capacity. A separate participation certificate establishes eligibility. None of these steps should be mistaken for an award or an operating network.

Read the dissent alongside the decision

Tania Villa Trápala supported the measure generally but opposed the regional segmentation and the absence of a permanent tender scheme. Her disagreement is recorded in the decision. So is the approval, on 1 October, of a general framework for tender procedures. The two points must not be collapsed into a claim that no procedural framework exists.

The dissent leaves a useful question about how further opportunities to obtain spectrum should be offered as industrial demand develops. It does not prove that this tender will fail. Nor can a favourable regulatory design prove that new providers will arrive. Those outcomes require evidence from qualified participation, awards and services offered to customers.

The document verified here is the decision and its attached call, not the complete Bases and appendices. It refers readers to those separate documents for the activity calendar. Dates cited in the earlier article are not restated as current deadlines because we have not independently checked the updated calendar. Failed access to another official webpage is not evidence that information has been withheld.

The interesting result will be an offer a factory can actually compare with another one: a named provider, a defined site, a delivery commitment and acceptance conditions. Until those emerge, the 216 lots tell us what Mexico is offering to bidders. They do not tell a factory what it can buy.

Correction and update, 23 October 2026: The final frequency blocks are larger, not smaller; the subdivision concerns geographical regions. We have clarified the commissioner's dissent, distinguished the call from the complete tender documents and removed the presentation of unverified dates as a current calendar. The original publication date and URL are retained.